o. 



o v 




o > 





s „ <$ ' CT r. " 




3> »V 





* D N ' 



** v % lisp* </v . 



^0 





^0* 

> - ' • o 






• ••• & °^ *° 

V » ' * CV A? s 

S* *v , iVA^SA/) a Sun r~y 












- o » o • V <{, V *U " • I » ' ^ ... <>. » 

# % J 3 ^ <t ^ & 




* J sjfotkr. V,/ *i!tti\ 




- 

^2 V 



!V , o " « 




o V 




A * V "* 

* "XL* % c° ■ 





* s « o ' V 




<5> »o.o' ^ 

► «> v 

I*. v ^ 

f\~ .0*0. *>. 



•A'W''/ 

4* , • 












Number 3. 



Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 



Price 10 Cts. 



Copyright, 1578, by Habper & Bbothsbs. 1 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 

BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE MEMBER FOR PARIS," ETC. 



"Vis consili expers mole ruit sua."— Horace. 



DEDICATED TO 

HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF SUTHERLAND, K.G., 

AS A TOUX OF III G II ESTEEM AND ADMIRATION FOE HIS COURAGE A M i PATRIOTISM 



INTRODUCTION. 

EPITOME OF THE HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 

■ 

The ancients only knew the South of Rus- 
sia in Europe. 

They divided it vaguely into Sarmatia and 
Scythia, and helievea those regions to be in- 
habited by a number of independent tribes : 
the Roxolani, Iazyges, Agathyrses, Hippo- 
molgi. Cimmerians, Taurians, Mceotians, and 
others. These hordes were said to live in 
tents, and the earliest reports of their cus- 
toms describe them as drinking fermented 
milk mingled with horse's blood, which made 
them tipsy. 

In the second century of the Roman Em- 
pire, the Slavs, who were the primitive in- 
habitants of Northern Russia, invaded Sarma- 
tia and Scythia and conquered all its tribes 
one by one. These Slavs, the oldest of 
European peoples, had Indian blood in their 
veins and were settled on the western shores 
of the Volga fifteen centuries before the 
Christian era. Their manners were Oriental 
and their religion as a mixture of Brahmin- 
ism and of the forest worship of the Ger- 
mans. They were polygamous, fierce, and 
thievish. 

In the 3rd century a.d. the Slavs were in 
their turn conquered by the Goths, who grad- 
ually extended their domination over all the 
homes encamped between the Baltic and the 
Black Sea ; and founded between the Dnie- 
per and the Niemen, the Volga and the Don 
a vast empire which comprise approximately 
the Russia in Europe of to-day. 

This empire was overthrown in 376 a.d. by 
the Huns, and during the next four centuries 
the south of the Gothic country, as it was 
called, became the scene of constant wars. 
The Huns, the Alaui, the Bulgarians, and 
Khazares successively reigned there and were 
expelled. 

AS yet no towns existed in the country, 



but towards the middle of the 6th century 
Kiew and Novgorod the Great were founded. 
The former as being the cradle city of the 
empire is known as Holy Kiew to this day 
It was the place where Christianity was first 
preached in Russia and where Wladiniir the 
Great was baptized in 988. 

By this time the dynasty of Rurik, chief of 
the Varegi, had established themselves on the 
throne of the fallen Gothic empire. 

Rurik subdued the Huns and Khazares 
and captured Novgorod in 862, and from this 
time the history of Russia (name derived from 
Rurik) properly begins. Rurik was a mighty 
conqueror and seems to have had governing 
abilities. His posterity rapidly consolidated 
their ride over the south of Russia and over 
Gallicia and settled their capital at Kiew. 
Under Wladimir I. they had become a power- 
ful race and became the stronger for embrac- 
ing Christianity, whose priests consecrated 
their authority to rule by divine right. 

Under Jaroslav L in 1020 they threatened 
Constantinople. 

Then as now religious zeal was pleaded as 
the excuse for coveting the Byzantine city, 
and from that day to this tho»provinees of 
Turkey in Europe have tempted every sove- 
reign who has reigned securely whether at 
Kiew, Moscow, or St. Petersburg. 

Jaroslav was unable to conquer the Turks 
and under his successor Isiaslav (1054-78) feu- 
dal wars commenced and raged intermittently 
during the next four centuries. Christianity 
having organized Russia on the feudal system 
of "Western Europe, Rurik's descendants 
scattered themselves as semi-independent 
princes at Novgorod, Polotsk, Smolensk, 
Tchernigov, Pereiaslav, Smoutatakan, 
Halicz, Tver, Vlodimierz, Souzdal, and at 
Moscow founded by Dolgorouki I. in 1147. 
Every prince did homage to the Grand Prince 
who reigned at Kiew, but disputes about fiefs 
and appanages were continually arming the 



vassals against their sovereign or against one 
another. 

Profiting by these civil wars the peoples of 
the East began invading Russia and several 
times were nearly bringing the empire to ruin. 
The Petchenegks and the Polovtses twice 
marched to Kiew and obliged the Grand 
Prince and his vassals to put aside their quar 
rcls in order to make common cause against 
the enemy. After one of these invasions 
which had been victoriously repulsed ; a 
schism arose between Jourie (or George), 
Grand Prince of Kiew, and Dolgorouki I. 
prince of Moscow, who set up an independ- 
ent throne. The separation lasted for eighty- 
six years, until in 1156 Isiaslav III. routed 
the Moscovitcs and restored the supremacy 
of the dynasty at Kiew. 

At last in 1224 came the great Mongol in- 
vasion, which had about the same effect on 
Russia as the Norman Conquest had on Eng- 
land. 

Touchi, the Mongolian chief, crossed the 
Volga with an army of 100,000 men and hav- 
ing conquered all the southern provinces of 
Russia instituted the empire of Kaptchak or 
the Golden Horde. His son Batou, reinforced 
by fresh myriads of Mongols, captured Kiew 
in 1240 and obliged Michael I. to fly to Vlad- 
imir and thence to Moscow. Soon Podolia, 
Volhynia, and Eastern Gallicia passed under 
the yoke, and the Russians of the north, 
unable to keep up the struggle, laid down 
their arms and submitted to be Batou 's 
vassals. 

The Mongolian domination lasted 150 
years, from 1240 to 1389. 

The sovereignty of Kiew was abolished ; 
and Jaroslav ft. prince of Moscow received 
the title of Grand Prince for himself and his 
descendants on condition of paying a yearly 
tribute to their conquerors. Novgorod freed 
itself from the Moscovite connection and 
set up as an independent republic under the 



protection of the Mongols. It looks odd to 
read of a republic in Russia, but Novgorod 
became to all intents a democratic common- 
wealth much more truly republican than the 
so-called republics of Italy which were 
oligarchies. The citizens had community of 
goods ; and it is believed that socialist organ- 
ization of the modern ' Mirs ' took its rise 
among them. Anyhow Novgorod is proud 
to this day of having once governed itself in 
freedom. 

The rule of the Mongols in Russia came 
to an end owing to their fratricidal wars with 
the Tartars. The latter growing arrogant 
after their conquests in India under Timour 
Beyg or Tamerlan, wearied the Mongols with 
their exactions, and forced them several 
times to call on their Moscovite vassals for 
assistance. A day came when the Russians 
got tired of shedding their blood for oppres- 
sors who burdened them with taxes and who 
in times of peace often pillaged their cities. 
In 1481 Ivan III. or the Great arose, like a 
Robert Bruce, vanquished both Mongols and 
Tartars, and drove them from the country. 
This done, he subdued Novgorod, Pskov, 
Biannia, Severia, annexed the Eastern portion 
of Siberia, and welded all his provinces into 
a strong empire of which he remained undis- 
puted master. 

Ivan III. was the first absolute sovereign 
of Russia, but he was satisfied with the title 
of Grand Prince. It was his grandson Ivan 
IV. who first assumed the title of Czar, de- 
rived from Caesar, in 1533. 

This Ivan IV., surnamed the Cruel, had to 
wage against his feudal princes the same sort 
of war as Louis XI. had waged against the 
French barons seventy years previously. He 
had inherited the throne when four years 
old, and during his long minority the boy- 
ards had had time to grow factious. Not 
content with subduing them, Ivan put to 
death as many as he could catch with the 
most refined tortures. He deluged his coun- 
try with blood, and having restored obedi- 
ence, burned the titles of nobility of all his 
boyards great and small, and decreed equality 
among his subjects. While doing all this he 
carried on successful wars against the Poles, 
Swedes and Tartars, conquered Kazan and As- 
trakan, and tried, though ineffectually, to seize 
upon Livonia. He has left a terrible name 
among the Russian aristocracy, but the com- 
mon people are rather inclined to revere his 
memory, and a popular legend, similar to 
that of King Arthur in England, prophesies 
that he will return to earth at some period of 
national danger and free the mujicks from 
the oppression of their lords. 

In 1598, fourteen years after Ivan's death, 
the dynasty of Rurik came to an end in the 
person of Fedor I., who was poisoned by 
Boris Godunow, his wife's brother, whom 
he had made prime minister. Boris Godunow 
■seized upon the throne, but after a short and 
troublous reign was himself poisoned. He 
was succeeded by his son Fedor II. ; but 
one Gregory Otrepiew, a monk, started up 
proclaiming himself to be Dmitri, or Demet- 
rius (the son of Ivan IV.), whom Boris God- 
unow had murdered, and finding many par- 
tisans he deposed Fedor II. Soon afterwards 
he was dethroned by another pretender, who 
was in his turn routed by Vladislaw Vasa, a 
Pole. 

It now looked as if Russia were going to 
perish, for the Swedes and Poles had fallen 
upon it and threatened to march upon Mos- 
cow ; but taking alarm at the danger, the 
leading boyards met in the capital in the year 
1613, "and sinking their differences elected 
Michael Romanow to be their Czar. 

Michael soon made peace with Sweden and 
Poland. By the treaty of Stolbova he 
yielded Ingria and Russian Carelia to Gusta- 
vus Adolphus ; and in 1618 signed a fourteen 
years' truce with the Poles, who had ad- 
vanced within sight of Moscow, and surren- 
dered to them Smolensk, Severia, and Tcher- 
nigov. A second treaty signed in 1634 con- 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 

firmed the Poles in the possession of thes 
provinces. But by this time Michael Roma 
now had fortified his country by judicious 
government ; and his two next successors, 
following his policy, became so strong that 
the Poles were at length beaten and had to 
give back Severia. The accession of Peter 
the Great in 1682 added to this prosperity and 
caused Russia to enter into an altogether new 
era of might. 

Until Peter's reign Russia had been more 
of an Oriental than a European country. 
Peter set about Europeanizing it and endowed 
it with a civilization according to his lights. 
He had to contend with the fierce opposition 
of a fanatical clergy and of the boyards ; but 
he broke the power of the former by declar- 
ing himself to be spiritual head of the 
Church, and reduced the nobles to order by 
abrogating their privileges and abolishing 
their titles as Ivan IV. had done. As he was 
liked by the mujicks and possessed all the 
qualities of a master mind, he succeeded in 
everything he attempted. He founded St. 
Petersburg in the midst of a swamp, causing 
60,000 houses to spring up there in ten years ; 
he extended his empire to the Caspian and 
the Black Sea ; saw the decline of Poland, 
and destroyed the military power of Sweden 
at Pultowa. 

From this time Russia began to hold a fore- 
most place in the councils of Europe. 

Peter the Great died in 1725, and his imme- 
diate successors followed the lines he had laid 
down for Russia's guidance in his famous 
will, which has become, so to say, the char- 
ter of Russian Imperialism. They kept Russia 
mighty, without, however, adding much to 
its territory, and it remained for Catharine II. 
to take up the Great Czar's ideas and prose- 
cute them in a spirit worthy of him. 

This strong-minded princess, the Semira- 
mis of the North as Voltaire called her, who 
reigned Trom 1762 to 1796, conquered Little 
Tartary, Lithuania, Courland, and the Cau- 
casus, extended her empire to the furthest 
confines of Siberia ; and in the two partitions 
of Poland which occurred in 1772 and 1795, 
obtained half of that ill-fated country. She 
also cast her eyes on Constantinople as Peter 
himself had done, but she did not live to real- 
ize the dream of her life, which was to trans- 
fer her capital to the shores of the Bosphorus. 

Her weak, half -crazy son Paul only reigned 
long enough to join in the Coalition which 
Great Britain had raised against revolutionary 
France ; but he had a secret admiration for 
General Bonaparte, and was suspected of not 
acting fairly by the Coalition. Had he lived 
he would probably have made friends with 
Napoleon at the expense of England ; but 
his extravagant behavior, bordering on mad- 
ness, caused him to fall a victim to a palace 
conspiracy. He was murdered in 1801, and 
the crown passed to his son Alexander III. , 
better known as Alexander I. 

This Czar was also an admirer of Napo- 
leon, but British policy kept him constantly 
in the anti-French Coalition except after the 
brief Peace of Tilsitt in 1807. Repeatedly 
beaten by Napoleon's armies, he yet contrived 
to add unceasingly to his dominions by the 
successive annexations of Finland, Eastern 
Bosnia, Georgia, and Bessarabia. In 1812 
Napoleon's invasion of Russia having ended 
in a fearful rout, caused rather by the sever- 
ity of the winter than by Russian general- 
ship, Alexander cast in his lot with the 
Allies, and after two years' campaigning in 
Germany and France entered Paris in 1814, 
and had a chief hand in the restoration of 
Louis XVIII. to the French throne. The 
treaties of 1815 confirmed him in the posses- 
sion of all the provinces he had annexed, and 
gave him about two thirds of Poland into 
the bargain. 

Alexander I. dying in 1825 was succeeded 
by his brother Nicholas I. , the hardest auto- 
crat whom Russia had known since the time - 
of Ivan IV. 

It was Nicholas I. 's main object to prevent 



the Liberal ideas propagated by the French 

Revolution from spreading into Russia. He 
'dnaugurated a system of despotism which 
kllowed no vent for public opinion and 
which bowed a huge nation of 70 millions of 
souls helplessly under his will and that of his 
creatures. It is computed that during his 
thirty-one years' reign not less than two 
millions of persons were transported to Si- 
beria for alleged political offences. 

In foreign affairs his policy was directed 
mainly against the Turks. He had made it 
the ambition of his life to conquer Constan- 
tinople. 

He began in 1827 by fomenting the cry 
for the independence of Greece, and having 
drawn Great Britain and France into a 
league against the Turks, had the gratifica- 
tion of bringing about the naval battle of 
Navarino. 

The Greek kingdom having been set up, 
England perceived a little too late that she 
had been drawn into a trap. Nicholas, pro- 
claiming the Holy War of the Christian 
against the Infidel, prepared to cross the 
Balkans and march upon Constantinople. 
An injunction from the great Powers under 
the leadership of England stopped him just 
in time. But Turkey had already suffered 
immensely from this Holy War. Besides los- 
ing Greece, her sovereignty over Servia, Wal- 
lachia, and Moldavia was virtually broken. 
The treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, signed in 1833, 
ratified these spoliations, and by hopelessly 
weakening the Ottoman empire paved the 
way for the Crimean War. 

Nicholas calculated that Great Britain and 
France, who had been enemies for so many 
centuries, would never form a fast alliance 
for the defence of Turkey, and it was this 
mistake which impelled him to send his 
armies across the Pruth in 1854. The an- 
swer to this aggression was a declaration of 
war from the Allies, who were intent not on 
upholding Turkey but on maintaining the 
balance of power. The defeats of Alma and 
Inkermann proved too much for the ambi- 
tious Czar. He saw his prestige gone, his 
great dream laid in ruins, and it is suspected 
that he committed suicide. Anyhow he died 
broken-hearted. 

Such is the summary of the history of Rus- 
sia up to the time of Alexander II. 's acces- 
sion. The principal events of the reign of the 
present Czar will be found alluded to and ex- 
plained in the following chapters. 

CHAPTER I. 

A SQUIRE AMONG MANY. 

Our scene lies near the province of Kher- 
son, in a dilapidated country mansion, built 
during the time when the refugee Due de 1 
Richelieu was requiting Russian hospitality 1 
by converting Odessa into a flourishing city. 

The kniaz — or Prince, as we indiscrimi- 
nately translate that title in English — who 
reared the mansion was a noble of the third 
degree, who, reckoning his riches by ' souls, ' 
as the custom was until sixteen years ago, 
boasted some 20,000 serfs. He was doubtless 
a friend of the French duke's, and tried to 
give his residence the look of those semi-cas- 
tellated chateaux which are still pretty com- 
mon in the midlands of France. He erected 
the two gabled turrets and the lofty dovecot 
which on French ground betokened seignorial 
rights ; he did not forget the windmill, where 
his affectionate slaves were to have their corn 
ground for a yearly fee to his miller ; and he 
set up a granite pedestal, which still moulders 
in the centre of the entrance-yard, and marks 
the spot where the enlightened nobleman 
must have contemplated putting his own 
statue as a fit completion of the work which 
his architect had done for him. 

But, like many other things begun in Rus- 
sia under the impulse of a temporary enthu- 
siasm for progress, Prince Wiskoff 's country 
house was never finished, though a goodly 
number of plate mirrors were hung up in the 
grand drawing-room before the roof was 



1- 



S 



TFE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



3 



fairly slated. Prince Wiskoff, seeing these 
mirrors become mildewed, and finding him- 
self rewarded with a touch of lumbago for 
his too great zeal in wishing to inhabit his 
mansion while the walls were still damp, 
took a dislike to the place and went off to St. 
Petersburg, vowing that men who devoted 
themselves to progress had always cause to 
repent of it. The~ Prince's son never came 
near the crumbling new house at all. The 
next Prince paid occasional visits to it, 
when he wanted some money and had a sus- 
picion that his steward was robbing him. 
As for the present Prince, if we find him 
;jermanently located in a house with which 
rains, rats, and years have pla3 _ ed such 
havoc, it is for the painful reason that his 
inances will not allow him to live elsewhere. 
Serge Wiskoff is forty years old, and spent 
the gay years of his youth in Paris. He mar- 
ried ten years asro, and, having left his wife's 
dower on M. Blanc *s tables at Monaco, is 
now kopeckless, the father of five children, 
and a councillor of Court. 

This does not mean that Prince "Wiskoff 
ever goes to Court to impart his counsels ; it 
simply signifies that he belongs to the seventh 
grade of the Tschinn, or organization of the 
nobility, and is supposed to hold a rank in 
the Civil Service equal to that of lieutenant- 
colonel in the army. Enrolment in the Civil 
Service was in his case a mere formality, in- 
"ended to give him a position in that official 
hierarchy outside of which a Russian noble- 
man counts for nothing. 

Prince Wiskoff began, at the age of 
twenty, as a college registrar, and, having 
never registered anything, was in due time 
promoted to a provincial secretaryship, 
whence, by the same process of doing noth- 
ing, he passed throush a succession of high- 
sounding dignities, till he reached the pres- 
ent grade, "which qualifies him to be ap- 
pointed to higher steps, each one of which 
will entail a disbursement of fees to the 
Treasury. As these fees are pretty large, 
there is no chance of Prince Wiskoff being 
passed over when his turn of promotion ar- 
rives ; indeed, the promotion of Russian 
noblemen to functions which they never dis- 
charge seems to be an ingenious method for 
taxing them beyond their means now and 
then, while keeping them in good humor at 
the same time. 

The Princess — or bariaa, as they call her 
on the estate — is so far from objecting to her 
husband's costly advancements, that she 
would cheerfully part with the few diamonds 
remaining to her if she could get him pushed 
forward at once to the ranks which would 
entitle her to be addressed as ' your high 
origin,' instead of 'your high nobility' as 
now. 

We do not say there is anything of femi- 
nine jealousy in this, though the Runoffs, 
who own the neighboring estate, are well 
known to be intriguers, who, by scraping to- 
gether a Utile money to bribe clerks with, 
have become ' high origins ' much before 
their time, and stick up their heads- in an in- 
sufferable fashion at the triennial assemblages 
)f the nobil.ry in the starostate. There was 
even some fear a twelvemonth ago that 
Alexis Runoff would be elected marshal of 
the nobiiity in his district, but the barina 
Wiskoff was spared this crushing humilia- 
tion by one vote — that of old Count Stampoff , 
whom the Runoffs had made so happy with 
a champagne breakfast, before the meeting, 
that he voted for the right man by mistake. 

Let no one be surprised that the barina 
should take such an interest in the triennial 
assemblage of nobles, for this is the solitary 
occasion in the course of three years when a 
Russian provincial nobleman finds anything 
of importance to do. 

His important doings last about a couple 
of hours, and consist in the election of a 
marshal, nobiliary delegates or committee- 
men, inspectors of local police, schoolmas- 
ters, and petty justices, -ill the other busi- 



ness is abandoned to the committeemen, who 
may have a taste for such questions as claims 
for nobiliary inheritance, charges of dishon- 
orable conduct brought by one noble against 
another, land transfers, road-mending, rate- 
levying, and so forth. However, the session 
as a whole fills up some three days, and dur- 
ing that time all the princesses and countesses 
round about meet in the district town, make 
merry, and dispense hospitality. The barina 
Wiskoff invites friends to stay a week at 
her palace, and orders a slaughter of lean 
calves and pigs in their honor. 

Out of the 650,000 hereditary nobles where- 
with Russia is blessed — not counting the 380,- 
000 who are not hereditary — many thousands 
stand in Prince "Wiskoff 's dignified position, 
of having spent all their money and having 
nothing to do. It may be urged in excuse 
for them, that it was because they had no- 
thing to do that they spent their money ; for, 
if a nobleman has no taste for garrison life or 
for employment in a Government office, what 
resources are open to him in a country whose 
political system has been devised expressly 
to check independent enterprise ? 

Prince "Wiskoff has thousands of good 
acres lying waste because it would not pay 
him to sell them. There are no decent 
roads near him, no canals or railways ; and 
if he and some brother nobles were to club 
together for an attempt to establish roads or 
railways, the bribes they would have to ad- 
minister to the bureaucracy in order to get 
their plans licensed would swallow up almost 
all the capital they could raise. 

Ride through the provinces of Southern 
Russia, and you come upon miles and miles 
of fruitful cornland, which might be con- 
verted into a granary for Europe. Here you 
see acres of fine wheat rotting uncropped, 
here herds of dust-colored cattle wandering 
about masterless and tainted with disease for 
want of looking after ; farther on you come 
upon a luxuriant plantation of tobacco, 
started as an experiment by some speculative 
boyard, who left it to its fate, because the tax 
he would have had to pay to the inland reve- 
nue for cutting the plants, and the trouble 
and cost he must have incurred in setting up 
a tobacco factory, would have left him no 
margin for profits. 

Beetroot, maize, hops, vines might all be 
grown in Southern Russia ; and it is not for 
want of foreign capital repeatedly tendered 
that the land remains a comparative wilder- 
ness, but the eternally grasping tschinn stands 
in the way of the foreign speculator, even 
more than of the native ; and Serge "Wiskoff, 
who is a tschinovnik himself in a small way, 
knows enough of the system not to ram his 
head against it by calling strangers to his aid. 

One cannot wonder that the Prince should 
have found his estate a dreary place, and 
have lived in Paris so long as his money 
lasted, and if he ran through his fortune and 
his wife's more quickly than was proper, it 
must be remembered that he had been 
brought up to consider himself the everlast- 
ing owner of 20,000 slaves, and that men in 
such a case are not wont to haggle with their 
roubles. 

The fact is, the emancipation laid the 
Prince on his back ; for it was not accompa- 
nied by such a general reform as would have 
developed the capabilities of the country by 
striking off the official trammels that fetter 
it : in other words, the nobles, being stripped 
of the revenues their serfs yielded, were not 
free to make themselves incomes as country 
gentlemen do in other lands. 

So poor Prince Wiskoff and his matronly 
barina yawn in their dilapidated mansion, 
whose walls are cracked and whose roof 
shakes at the least wind. They have a few 
gaunt, thin pigs grunting about their yards ; 
the village pope comes to give lessons in 
Greek to the children ; the district land- 
agent steps in now and then of an evening to 
drink vodki and play ecarte with the Prince ; 
and the barina, when not troubled with house- 



hold cares, lies on a sofa and reads French 
novels. 

Yet Serge "Wiskoff is an intelligent man, 
who, before he had grown rusty and crusty 
from poverty and idleness, was fitted for a 
better life than this ; and the barina herself 
is so conscious that she was fashioned to 
adorn the highest spheres of society that for 
years her one idea was whether money might 
not be begged, borrowed, or obtained by in- 
heritance to enable her and her husband to go 
for another trip to Paris and enjoy them- 
selves in hotels. 

The present war naturally overturned these 
laudable schemes, for, like a good woman, 
the barina sent half her few diamonds and all 
her husband's spare cash to the Army Fund, 
firmly persuaded that while laying up 
treasure in heaven she was also putting out 
her gift to good worldly interest. So did the 
Prince think this. Like many another tschin- 
ovnik, he looked to the conquest of Turkey 
as certain to secure him a lucrative berth, 
and has for some months pictured himself as 
installed in Bulgaria and initiating that mis- 
used province into the benefits of the govern- 
ment system under which he has himself 
thriven. 

CHAPTER II. 

AN EMANCIPATED VILLAGE. 

Prince "Wiskoff 's tumble-down palace 
stands on the outskirts of a village more than 
a mile long, whose main street is twice as 
broad as Pall-Mall. The great size of this typi- 
cal village comes of the fact that every hovel 
in it is fronted by a yard of an acre or two in 
extent, which serves no purpose but to ac- 
cumulate dust in summer, and mud and 
slush during the three other seasons. 

The idea of converting these plots of good 
ground into kitchen-gardens has never oc- 
curred to any of the peasantry ; and Govern- 
ment, which meddles with so many things, 
has not thought it worth while to point out 
to them that if they planted potatoes, turnips, 
salads, and fruit-trees they might enjoy de- 
cent fare all the year round, and pick up 
some money into the bargain. 

The Russian peasant grows white-headed 
cabbages and little else. These vegetables 
flourish in patches behind the hovels ; when 
fermented they form the stock of the tclvi, 
which is the soup of the lower orders, and of 
the borsch (mixture of cabbages and dried 
mushrooms) eaten by the middle classes. It 
is on cabbage alone, with an addition of 
maize porridge, that the peasantry may be 
said to feed ; for eggs, bacon, milk, butter, 
cheese, and all the other edibles of country 
life in "Western Europe, are unknown in the 
village. Nor have the peasants the hale looks 
of "Western rustics. 

The women, flat faced, tow haired, with 
red-rimmed eyes and broad nostrils, prowl 
about in knee-boots and long sheepskin gar- 
ments like the men. They are lazy, smile- 
less, and silent, except when drunk on corn 
brandy, which makes them howl and romp. 
The men also require vodki to rouse them 
from the indolent moroseness which is their 
habitual mood, though they are active enough 
in rendering any service that may bring them 
a ten-kopeck piece. 

Peep into the huts of these odd creatures, 
and you find a floor of hardened manure, a 
table, a couple of benches, a stove, and an 
iron statuette of the Virgin in a niche. There 
are no beds, chests of drawers, or anything 
to suggest the use of linen and the washing 
of the same. The stove-top is the favorite 
sleeping-place during cold weather ; in the 
hot months father, mother, and children curl 
themselves up like caterpillars, and lie down 
in corners. 

One need not wait for night to find a 
whole family tnus sleeping. After the mid- 
day meal has been eaten, the peasant will as 
often as not lie down and snore away the 
whole afternoon, as if, next to vodki, he 
knew of nothing on earth so good as idleness. 



4 

Why should the man work, since he has 
never yet been taught that work is profitable ? 

We are passing through a village, whose 
inhabitants, before the emancipation, were 
all serfs of Prince Wiskoff. The Prince's 
agent in those times used to thrash them into 
industry in order that his master might have 
money to gamble with and he himself money 
to filch ; but as the serf's condition was never 
bettered by his hard labor — as, on the con- 
trary, the more he toiled the more was ex- 
pected of him— he naturally took a distaste 
for the practice of exerting himself ; so that 
when the emancipation was decreed, he con- 
cluded that his working days were over. 

He has stuck to that idea ever since. 

He would work for a fair wage if it were 
offered him ; he would even accept a hint 
about planting those potatoes and turnips if 
he were furnished with the seed and assured 
that he might eat the produce when it came 
up ; but he has a shrewd sort of notion that 
if he bettered his lot overmuch by labor he 
would draw upon himself the attentive eye of 
the taxgatherer. This exacting official, the 
exciseman, the land-agent from whom the 
cottage is rented, the peripatetic Jew from 
Odessa from whom money has been bor- 
rowed — all seem to be in a league to pocket 
the mnjick's earnings ; and from what little 
remains when they have all had their share 
the parish priest begs the biggest half. 

But the peasant gives willingly enough to 
the priest — or rather to the Church ; for 
priests individually are neither liked nor re- 
spected in Russia. In this miserable village, 
so filthy and poverty-stricken that the fierce, 
spare-ribbed dogs who gad about can scarce 
find a bone or bit of offal — in this place of 
dust, mud, and squalor — rises a church which 
would be deemed an ornament to any West- 
ern capital. Fair without, it glitters inside 
with splendid treasures bought in the holy 
city of Kiew. The altar is" of marble, the 
candlesticks of silver, many of the images, 
crosses, and pictures are thickly encrusted 
with gold ; so are the vestments of the priest, 
the Communion-plate, and the font — this last 
being cut out of a solid block of malachite. 

For ages the piety or superstition of Prince 
Wiskoff and his ancestors, of the laud-agents, 
of the mujicks — of every one, in short — has 
enriched this church with voluntary gifts. 
In old days a serf who obtained his freedom 
never failed to bring his votive offering, and 
if he went away to prosper as a merchant in 
one of the inland cities he would send offer- 
ings annually till his death, to the end that 
luck might not desert him ; the Wiskoffs, 
also, whether they won at the gaming-tables 
or lost, always found money to pay for some 
new chalice or statue, and to this hour the 
peasants will club together every year to make 
some costly present the richness of which 
consoles them for their own poverty. 

To the Russian peasant, indeed, the church 
is far more of a home than the hovel where 
he dwells. He enters it at all times, and may 
be found kneeling for hours opposite the 
shrine of his favorite saint, and gazing with 
ecstasy at the gorgeous things which fill his 
foggy mind with visions of Paradise. Per- 
haps he dreams of being himself clothed 
some day in gold brocade like the saint 
in question ; anyhow, be he never so poor, 
drunken, and desperate, he would not steal 
so much as a pin from his church. Nor 
would a professional brigand dare to commit 
such sacrilege. 

Sometimes in travelling over the windy 
steppes you come across a gang of small- 
eyed, wiry little men, mounted upon yeo- 
necked galloways, with uncombed hair of 
rusty brown floating down their backs and 
ugly weapons stuck in their girdles ; and 
you know these men to be banditti, who 
would make no more fuss about robbing a 
Jew pedlar than about sticking a stray pig 
and roasting him for dinner. But let the Jew 
have consecrated ornaments in his pack, and 
they will piously sign themselves, leaving 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 

these things to his care, and purloining only 
his furs, knives, horn cups, pinchbeck trink- 
ets, and such like, whereof, as we know, the 
saints take no account. 

One day a pedlar being overtaken with a 
rather valuable cargo of profane jewellery got 
out of his scrape by flourishing in the faces 
of his would-be depredators the shin-bone of 
a holy martyr which he had purchased in 
the Kiew catacombs. The pious brigands 
only waited to see whether the Kiew mark (a 
dove and cross) was duly imprinted on the 
bone, and then scampered off, disgusted that 
such a precious article should be in the hands 
of an infidel, and yet not daring to rob him 
of it. 

Look now and see a cloud of dust whirling 
up in the village road, and hear from the 
midst of it the wild ' yahoop ' of a coachman. 
This is Prince Serge Wiskoff being driven 
to mass in his paracladrwi — a thing like a 
springless donkey-cart, drawn by three 
shaggy ponies, which gallop like the wind. 
The bearded driver, perched on a high seat, 
belabors his team without mercy, and yells 
because a noiseless progress would not befit 
the dignity of his master, least of all when 
going to divine service on a saint's day. 

For this is not Sunday, only one of those 
frequent saints' days when what little work 
is done at other times is suspended and the 
entire population devote themselves to religion 
and vodki. The Prince is too well versed in 
French literature not to be a Voltairian, but 
he has prudence enough not to neglect the 
outward observances of his faith ; for if he 
did, the prestige which he still retains among 
his former serfs would vanish. 

As it is the peasantry treat their old master 
with a fair show of slavishness. They no 
longer duck down on both knees when he 
alights among them at the church porch, as 
they would have done of yore ; but they bow 
with a profound humility, address him as 
' little father,' and fawn upon him for gifts of 
money. Before the day is over he will be 
obliged to empty his purse among them and, 
having refilled it (with very small coin), to 
empty it again ; for although he can so ill 
afford to give, 'Jt suits him to play the mag- 
nificent, just as it suits the barina to be gra- 
cious and charitable to the women folks. 

The Wiskoffs well know the peasantry 
nowadays have got imbued with some ideas 
which might prove very awkward in time of 
trouble to noble families who are unpopular. 
No newspapers penetrate among them, the 
village pope does not talk politics, the publi- 
can who keeps the brandy shop is a loyal, 
taciturn person, and yet here is not a peasant 
but grumbles that the Czar — their good fa- 
ther — would do a great deal for his people 
if the nobles would only let him. 

He hears these things from the righteous 
pilgrims who pass through the village, beg- 
ging their way from place to place as far as 
Kiew ; he hears them from the Jew pedlars, 
who hate the Government, its Tschinn, and 
its nobles, with an intensity of hatred, and 
who, as they tramp about the country, scatter 
discontent broadcast ; he hears them from 
soldiers returning, sullen and penniless, after 
fifteen years' service ; from bands of howling 
fanatics belonging to some new-fangled sect, 
who start up in the village one day, shriek 
nonsense for a couple of hours, and then 
troop away, to be no more heard of ; and he 
hears them again from emissaries of secret 
agrarian societies, who spread their treason 
with the greater ease as they can afford to 
bribe the police to let them alone. 

The mujick has no wish to hurt the 
Czar, whom he worships as the fountain of 
all good ; but let the signal of revolt be given, 
and he will rise up, in the Czar's name, 
against the nobles and tax-collectors, and woe 
to those who will try to make him hear reason 
in those days when he will have taken up 
arms for one of those wild,' unrealizable 
dreams such as can only dawn in the skulls 
of the ignorant and wretched ! 



CHAPTER in. 

A CO -OPERATIVE VILLAGE. 

How comes it that Prince Wiskoff, having 
many thousand acres of fertile land, can 
afford neither to till nor sell them, and re- 
mains poor ? How comes it that his peasants 
in the village we have visited are as idle as if 
they had a direct interest in being so '< 

The peasants are idle because plots of 
ground are rented to them on short leases of 
a year, and they find no profit in improving 
these holdings since they have no security 
of tenure. H they brought up fine crops 
their rents would be raised and so would their 
taxes. Moreover, they are all, without ex- 
ception, in debt either to usurers for advances 
made to buy tools or to their landlord him- 
self for arrears of rent ; so that if they ap- 
peared to be earning money they would be 
asked for more than they had got, and their 
last state would be worse than the first. 

As it is, they give the tax-collectors what 
they must and their landlord what they can, 
which is not a great deal ; the landlord, on 
his side, must be content to see them ruin his , 
land by barbarous methods of cultivation , 
sooner than turn them off and get nothing. 
It may be asked why he does not f arm out I 
his estate in large holdings and at long leases, 
but the difficulty is to find farmers. Men 
who have capital and experience enough to 
undertake a farm are scarce. 

In places where the experiment has been 
successfully tried the landowners were them- 
selves good agriculturists who resided upon 
their estates and kept a constant watch over 
the farmers, who else would have impover- 
ished their soil and dragged them into costly 
lawsuits ; besides, both farmers and proprie- 
tors have to contend against this obstacle — 
that hired laborers cannot be got to fulfil 
their contracts. For fair wages the best 
among them, if well coaxed, will do a fair 
day's work, but, if they hear of better wages 
being paid elsewhere, they will troop off~in 
a body, leaving the hay on the ground or the 
cut corn to take care of itself. 

Others will hire themselves out to two mas- 
ters, and after receiving a month's prepay- 
ment (which is customary) go away to drink 
and work for neither ; others, again, besotted 
by habitual intemperance, will at ordinary 
times scarcely work their wages' worth, and 
in mid-harvest will altogether decline touch- 
ing scythe or rake for days together, because 
of church festivals which have to be kept 
sacred. The justices of the peace, who | 
sometimes live dozens of miles from the 
aggrieved hirers, cannot easily be appealed 
to ; and when at hand do little towards en , 
forcing a contract beyond sentencing the 
delinquent to three days' imprisonment — the 
complainant having generally to pay the 
costs of the process as well as the delinquent's 
carriage to prison. 

All this brings agriculture to a standstill. 
Prince Wiskoff, like many others, is waiting 
for better times, without exactly seeing how 
they arc to come under the present system of 
government. However, the vague hope that 
the extension of railways may put things 
straight in his children's time, if not in his 
own," prevents him from parting with his un- 
remunerative property for the very low price 
which its sale would fetch him at present. 

But let us leave this perplexed nobleman's 
village and proceed to another, which once 
formed part of the Wiskoff estate, but is now 
the property of a Mir, or peasant association. 

The Mir system may be summed up in a 
few words : it has simply caused the peasant 
to exchange the domination of his old master 
for the more grinding tyranny of many mas- 
ters. Nominally, he is the free member of a 
co-operative agricultural society ; virtually, 
he is a bondsman tied to the soil he tills by a 
load of debt, and unable to free himself or bet- 
ter his condition by any amount of individual 
exertion. The Mir village is as beggarly to 
look at as the other we have seen, but there is 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



•5 



this difference : that -when you have passed a 
mile's length of battered hovels and come in 
sight of the usual l>eautiful church, with its 
inevitable sky-blue dome and gilt minarets, 
vou suddenly descry a row of quite hand- 
some cottages, built of red brick, with sub- 
stantial doors and windows, and rather re- 
sembling new Swiss villas. 

These are the residences of the startchina 
(mayor) and of the starostas (elders or alder- 
men) ; and their prosperous state at once tells 
a story, for the Mir officials are not supposed 
to possess a kopeck more than their fellow - 
commoners : and if they do it is because 
they peculate, and are furthermore influential 
enough to get themselves re-elected over and 
over again that they may go on peculating. 

Here we see the startchina step out of his 
house — a yellow-bearded, blue eyed person, 
with a square furred cap and a fine new 
gfaeepskin touloupa. girt at the waist with a 
black silk sash. He is in deep conversation 
with a commercial traveller, from whom he 
has ljecn buying some agricultural machinery 
for his Mir ; but he leaves him at once to 
welcome you, and with soft winning Russian 
Courtesy introduces you to his bouse, where 
•me of his sons, a boy in red-topped boots and 
a white calico tunic, soon brings in some cap- 
ital tea, vodki, and cigarettes. The startchina 
does not present his wife and daughters, for 
Russians of the middle-class cling to the Ori- 
ental custom of secluding their women ; but 
he comes and sits down with you near the 
white-faced stove, and he has a most satis- 
factory account to give you of the village 
which he governs. 

At the emancipation, he says, the villagers 
(500 able-bodied men, not counting women 
and children) entered into a bond to buy of 
Prince Wiskoff the land which they occupied, 
for which they had been paying him an 
otatik, or fief-rent, of 0,000 roubles. This 
sum, at the legal rate of interest, per cent.. 
It presented a capital of 100,000 roubles, 
which the Mir proceeded to borrow of the 
Government Land Bank. That bank, how- 
ever, in pursuance of its rules, would only 
lend 80,000 roubles— that is, four-fifths of the 
nine of the land — while taking a mortgage 
an the whole ; and the loan was not advanced 
in money, but in bonds bearing per cent, 
interest and payable in thirty-seven years. 

Prince Wiskoff, being in need of cash, and 
only able to convert his bonds at heavy dis- 
count, naturally insisted that the Mir should 
make good this discount, as well as pay him 
the 20,000 roubles they had been unable to 
borrow by instalments extending over forty- 
nine years, with 6 per cent, on the unpaid 
sum. The terms of the bank were also G per 
cent, with forty-nine years of annual instal- 
ments ; so the Mir started into life with lia- 
bilities amounting to something like 12,000 
roubles a year. 

But another loan from usurers was soon 
needful to buy agricultural machinery ; and 
if we add to this the land taxes — the weight 
of which may be judged from the fact that 
the peasantry pay 10.5,000,000 roubles a year 
to the Treasury, as against 13,000,000 roubles 
paid by the landowners — it will be seen that 
this Mir works under rather depressing con- 
ditions. If the startchina thinks otherwise, 
the reason is very simple — it is he who, as 
mayor, negotiated" all the loans ; who, with 
the ciders, buys all that is wanted in the Mir 
for the common good (vodki included), and 
.sells the produce of the community ; and it 
is he who, when a member of the Mir wants 
to go off and better himself as a workman or 
tradesman in towns, decides on what terms 
leave shall be granted him, and on what 
terms he shall buy himself out of the com- 
munity, should he subsequently be able to do 
so. 

Let us hope there are some mayors and 
elders who rule their Mirs honestly ; but 
there is no public or press to keep an eye on 
them, no officials charged to audit their ac- 
counts ; and it must be recollected that the 



more corrupt a municipal body are, so much 
the greater is their chance of being re- 
elected, for with the electors' own money 
they can buy all the votes they want. 

Now, under this system a peasant is much 
more a slave than of old. He can marry at 
his pleasure, and he is not liable to be cuffed 
or flogged (save Dlegally as sometimes hap- 
pens) ; these are the advantages he has won ; 
but he is more heavily amerced than he used 
to be, and nothing that he has is his own. 
If he works too little his comrades abuse 
him ; if he works his best he is no gainer, for 
all his earnings go into the common stock, 
which somehow never yields a surplus. 

There are years when the Mir cannot pay 
its taxes. As the members are collectively 
responsible to the tax-gatherer, it stands to 
' reason that no one of them cares to seem 
, richer than the rest, lest his superfluities 
: should be seized for the common debt. 
Thus, one will not think of breeding cattle 
unless all the rest do, he will not dare to ex- 
hibit money he has saved, and, in fact, what 
little he can lay by all goes in vodki, which 
is the safest investment. 

Of vodki there is always enough in the 
Mir, for it is a means of government. It 
\ circulates by the pailful at election time ; it 
j is plentiful on saints' days, when, if not 
drunk, the men might muster and grumble 
: about their hardships ; it comes forth again in 
mysterious abundance whenever, from some 
\ cause or other, the mayor gets into evil odor 
and wants to regain his popularity. 

Note that this mayor and his elders are 
never plagued by the tax-gatherer when taxes 
run short. The State official closes his eyes 
, to the suugness of their homes ; he professes 
to find nothing seizable among their chattels, 
and always screws the deficit out of the 
j peasants. 

Some mujicks with more brains than oth- 
I ers go away if they can find a chance of em- 
ployment, and then, as we have said, it be- 
comes a question between them and the 
mayor as to how much they shall pay. The 
least they can be charged is their full share 
| towards the Mir's debt ; but if, growing rich, 
they want to liberate themselves for good, 
, the mayor can assess a fancy value on their 
! co-operation, and order them back if they re- 
fuse to pay it. The affair generally ends in 
, a compromise. A sum is paid, of which the 
' lion's share goes into the pockets of the 
startchina and elders, while the rest furnishes 
j a good carouse for some or all of the other 
; villagers. 

Anything better calculated than all this to 
I breed general idleness, wretchedness, and de- 
| pravity can hardly be imagined ; but it also 
breeds this idea among the peasants — that 
I they did not get a fair start after the emanci- 
pation, and ought to be exonerated from all 
j their debts to the Land Bank and Prince 
! Wiskoff. 

" As the soft-spoken mayor shows us round 
his domain and purrs complacently about 
the blessings of co-operation he is obliged to 

j confess that the Mirs will never be happy till 
the Czar by a stroke of his f atherly pen shall 
rid them of their liabilities ; and he opens 

i wide his blue eyes on being told that the Czar 
dare not do this thing. lie thinks it would 

I be the simplest affair in the world, needing 
nothing but to defy the Tachion. 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE TEMTER.VXCE QUESTION. 

We have come on a flying visit to Odessa, 
' and are living in a many-storied house, whose 
J dvornik or porter is a responsible person, and 
! we are sorry to say that he is often drunk. 
I Sorry, because his multifarious duties re 
quire a sober mind. 

He takes the rent of lodgers and gives re- 
ceipts for it ; he must keep bad characters 
and vagabond dogs out of the house-yard ; 
he has to raise an alarm in case of fire, to 
i see that the sewers are clear, to light the 



petroleum lamps on the staircase after dark, 
to scatter ashes over the pavement when it is 
slippery with frost, and to sweep away the 
snow. If he neglects any of these tasks he 
is liable to be fined, and even chastised in 
private, by the police ; yet he drinks himself 
incapable every feast-day, and our istwscJiik, 
or coachman, gets still more drunk in his 
company. 

Happily, coachman and porter make no 
pretence of attending to their duties when 
the boozing fit is on them. They simply van- 
ish out of sight, and leave you to get on with- 
out them as you can. The tipsiness of the 
dvornik always leads to a big theft of the 
fuel stacked in the front yard ; that of the 
istvoschik obliges you to hire a public dros- 
chi, which is after all better than being driv- 
en about by a fuddled coachman, who might 
charge the acacias that border the dusty 
streets or plunge at full gallop off the quay 
into the port, as some have been known to 
do. Both the men are good, industrious fel- 
lows when sober, and express regret for their 
weakness ; but they have a doleful story to 
tell of how they once tried to become total 
abstainers and got into trouble with the au- 
thorities in consequence. 

This was about a dozen years ago, when 
the liquor traffic was farmed out by Govern- 
ment to speculators, who abused their mon 
opoly to sell vodki at exorbitant rates. The 
peasantry, knowing that there was a tariff 
which was only eluded by connivance with 
the provincial authorities, whom the monop- 
olists bribed, banded themselves into temper- 
ance societies, with a view to forcing down 
the prices. Hereupon the farmers com- 
plained to Government, and the teetotal 
leagues were dissolved as illegal secret soci- 
eties. 

This had already happened in 1854 and 
1859, before serfage was abolished ; and on 
both these occasions very summary measures 
were taken towards forcing the people to con- 
tribute to the revenue by their intemperance. 
Policemen and soldiers were sent into the 
disaffected districts, and the teetotallers were 
flogged into drinking ; some who doggedly 
held out had liquor poured into their mouths 
through funnels, and were afterwards hauled 
off to prison as rebels ; at the same time the 
clergy were ordered to preach in their 
churches against the new form of sedition, 
and the press-censorship thenceforth laid its 
veto upon all publications in which the im- 
morality of the liquor traffic was denounced. 

These things sound incredible, but they are 
true. In 1865 the people fancied that because 
they were no longer serfs they could not be 
treated so unceremoniously as of yore, but 
they found out their mistake. They were 
simply dealt with as insurgents, and, though 
not beaten, were fined, bullied, and preached 
at till there was no spirit of resistance left in 
them. However, this new rising led to the 
abolition of the monopolies. An excise was 
substituted, the price of vodki fell by compe- 
tition, and the lower orders of Russia are 
now drunker than ever. According to the 
latest returns (' Wesselowski's, Annual Regis- 
ter '), the liquor duties yield the revenue 
800,000,000 roubles (£32,000,000 sterling) a 
year. 

One morning a soft-spoken policeman, in a 
gray top-coat, calls to say that our coachman, 
who vanished overnight, is lying at the sta- 
tion under a charge of assault committed 
while inebriate. Is it our pleasure that he 
should be made to act as public scavenger 
for three days in the ' drunk gang ' ? We 
have a private idea that to sweep the streets 
would do our istvoschik no harm, but the 
point is really this — shall we bribe him out 
of his scrape, or by declining to do so stir up 
the police to prefer a charge which may keep 
him in prison, not for days, but months? 
We produce three roubles, reflecting that we 
can deduct them from Ivan Ivanowitch's 
wages, and by and by Ivan turns up, sober 
and thankful, to explain that he would never 



6 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



have been arrested at all if the police had not 
felt sure that his master would buy him off. 

This is so true that the man will be sacred 
in the policeman's eyes for perhaps three 
months to come. Let him stagger about as 
rowdily as he pleases, be quarrelsome and 
insolent, the police will take no notice of 
him till the time has arrived when they think 
they may decently claim three more roubles. 

As influential persons, such as great noble- 
men, bishops, diplomatic and consular 
agents, cannot be called upon for black-mail, 
their servants enjoy full license as to intoxi- 
cation ; so do petty Civil servants and mili- 
tary officers in their own persons, for a po- 
liceman who meddled with them might find 
himself in trouble : but all non-official peo- 
ple whose servants exceed sobriety, or who 
do so themselves, must bribe or take the 
consequences, which are unpleasant. 

A person may also be severely punished for 
not getting drunk, as a certain Polish school- 
master whom we' met one day disconsolately 
wielding a besom on the quays in company 
of a dozen kopeckless rogues who are being 
made examples of because they had no friends. 
The crime of our schoolmaster was that 
he lifted up his voice in his school and in tea- 
shops against ' King Vodki,' and tried to in- 
veigle some university students into taking a 
temperance pledge. He was privately warned 
that he had better hold his peace, but he 
went on, and the result was that one evening 
as he was walking home somebody bumped 
against him ; he protested ; two policemen 
forthwith started up, hauled him off, charged 
him with being drunk and disorderly, and 
the next day he was sentenced to sweep the 
streets for three days — a sentence, which for-, 
tunately does not involve the social annihila- 
tion which it would in other countries. 

The fact is that in Russia you must not ad- 
vocate temperance principles ; the vested in- 
terests in the drink trade are too many and 
strong. Nobody forces you to drink your- 
self ; the Raskolniks, or dissenters, who are 
the most respectable class of the Russian 
community and number 10,000,000 souls, are 
in general abstainers, but they, like others, 
must not overtly try to make proselytes. 
There are many most enlightened men who 
hate and deplore the national vice, who try 
to check it among their own servants, who 
would support any rational measure of legis- 
lation by which it could be diminished ; but 
if one of them bestirred himself too actively 
in the matter he would find all his affairs in 
some mysterious fashion grow out of joint. 
Authors and journalists are still less in a po- 
sition to cope with the evil, for the press 
censors systematically refuse to pass writings 
in which the prevalency of drunkenness is 
taken for granted. 

Before, the abolition of the monopolies a 
land-owner might set up a distillery on his 
estate, but he was compelled to sell the pro- 
duce to the vodki-farmers, and these specu- 
lators might build a public-house on his land 
against his consent, though he was entitled 
to fix the spot and to receive a fair rent. At 
present, the trade being free, licenses to dis- 
til and sell are conferred by Government (i.e. 
virtually bought of the Tschinn) and almost 
every landowner of consequence has one. 

Prince Wiskoff might get one if he pleased, 
and has more than once thought of so doing ; 
but he has been deterred for want of capital 
to compete with his intimate enemy and 
neighbor, Prince Runoff, who has a distillery 
in full swing and floods the whole district 
with its produce. The Prince's chief agents 
are the priests, who in the farming days were 
allowed a regular percentage . on the drink 
sold in their parishes, but who now receive a 
lump sum, nominally as an Easter gift, but 
on the tacit understanding that they are to 
push the sale of vodki by every means in 
their power. 

The pious men do not go the length of 
urging their parishioners to get drunk, but 
they multiply the church feasts whereon rev- 



elry is the custom ; they affirm that stimu- 
lants are good for the health because of the 
cold climate, and they never reprove a peas- 
ant whose habitual intemperance is notori- 
ous. The Prince's land agent, the tax-col- 
lectors, the conscription officers, all join in 
promoting the consumption of vodki by 
transacting their business at the village dram- 
shop, with glasses before them ; and even the 
doctor, who lives by the Prince's patron- 
age, prescribes vodki for every imaginable 
ailment. 

The inducements to drink in the towns are 
not less than in the country. When the 
coachman, Ivan Ivanowitch, goes out for a 
stroll among the fine streets of Odessa he is 
lured into the tea-shops by the loud music of 
barrel-organs, and vodki is served him with 
his tea as a matter of course. If he drives 
his master to a party, he has no sooner drawn 
up his trap under the shed in the host's yard, 
than the servants invite him into a lower 
room and give him as much spirit as he will 
drink ; if he goes to the cornchandler's for 
oats, to the veterinary surgeon about his 
horse's legs, to the harness-maker's or coach- 
maker's, the preface to all business is vodki ; 
and when he sets out to visit his kinsmen 
upon holidays, vodki greets him upon every 
threshold. 

It is the same with the dvornik when he 
ascends to the different flats of the house to 
collect rent or carry letters ; vodki is offered 
him before he has had time to state his busi- 
ness ; and under these hospitable circum- 
stances the wonder is not that the man should 
occasionally exceed sobriety, but that he 
should so often be sober. But in Russia a 
sober servant means — excepts excipie/idis — 
one who only gets drunk upon the festivals 
of the Church. 

CHAPTER V. 

THROUGH THE STREETS. 

In most Russian towns the houses are 
small, and every family has one of its own as 
in England. St. Petersburg and Odessa are 
exceptions. 

Here the population live in flats, within six 
and seven storied houses, higher than those 
of Paris. In the poorer quarters of Odessa 
the giant houses have an odd look, owing 
firstly to the dust from the steppes, which 
paints them the color of pea-soup, and sec- 
ondly to the smallness of the windows and 
the number of absent panes which have been 
replaced by layers of greased paper on ac- 
count of the dearness of glass. 

A watch-glass costs a rouble in Odessa, a 
foot-square window-pane about six shillings. 
In the inland towns the prices are still high- 
er ; so that a Russian boy who puts his fist 
through a pane commits one of the heaviest 
crimes in the domestic decalogue and does 
not escape the wrath of an usually apathetic 
father. 

Odessa enjoys the reputation of being the 
most Liberal city of the Empire (Moscow and 
Kiew being the most Conservative), and next 
to the capital the fairest. About ten years 
ago it succeeded in getting itself paved after 
fruitless efforts in that direction as strenuous 
and as remarkable in their way as those of 
Geneva struggling for the Protestant faith. 

First a paving rate was levied in 1815, 
after the great peace, and the tschinovniks 
put the money in their pockets. Then 
Prince Woronzow, governor of the Cherson- 
ese, raised a new rate, but on second thoughts 
concluded that the money would be better 
spent in constructing a monumental staircase 
from the handsome boulevard that faces the 
sea down to the beach. A lean statue of the 
Due de Richelieu in Roman undress stands at 
the top of that Babylonian flight of steps, 
which not a dozen persons descend in the 
course of the day. After this a British con- 
tractor presented himself, offering to pave 
the city very cheap ; he bribed the tschinov- 
niks all round, got an advance of money and 
disappeared. 



Nothing daunted, a very intelligent golova 
(burgomaster) of Odessa conspired with some 
wealthy fellow-citizens to pave the city by a 
public subscription under the form of a vol- 
untary rate ; but, having forgotten to adminis- 
ter douceurs in the proper quarters, he was 
suspended by the civil governor for being a 
meddlesome person, and the paving plans 
were forwarded for the fourth time to the 
Office of Public Works in St. Petersburg 
The answer came back at the end of two 
years, ordering the work to be carried out by 
the Government engineers ; the rate-collector 
went his rounds afresh, and for the next year 
or two every quarter of the town was suc- 
cessively visited by cartloads of paving- 
stones. 

But nothing came of these visits, except too 
rash anticipations, briefly dispelled. After a 
cartload of stones had encumbered a thor- 
oughfare for a month, another cart would 
come and remove it elsewhere. Meanwhile a 
canopy of dust hung over the city, obscuring 
the sun in fair weather, while in rainy times 
the streets were often wholly impassable, cer- 
tain quarters becoming afflicted with a 
drought of water, because the water-carriers 
could not ply their trade either on foot or in 
carts. Nothing less than a visit from the 
present Czar was needed to obtain for the 
Odessians the great boon of getting the pave- 
ments they had repeatedly paid for and were 
willing to pay for again. So at length the 
city was paved ; not cheaply, indeed, nor 
over well, but still paved. 

These facts are worth noting, because hun- 
dreds of other Russian towns are struggling 
with the question of paving, or else with 
that of water supply or street-lighting, as pa- 
tiently and hopelessly as Odessa did for half 
a century. The Czar cannot spend his life 
in travelling. 

The streets of a Russian city are pictur- 
esque, for signboards abound and shop-fronts 
are painted in staring colors — light blue, yel- 
low, and apple-green. There are no posters 
on hoardings, for advertising constitutes a 
monopoly in the hands of a company, who 
have hitherto confined themselves to the 
newspaper branch of puffing and have not 
mustered enterprise enough to disfigure pub- 
lic thoroughfares. At the corner of almost 
every street you come upon a Byzantine-look- 
ing shrine of the Virgin, with a number of 
Russians signing themselves bareheaded in 
front. You meet the Virgin in various other 
unexpected places — in railway stations, in 
post-offices, with a little oil-lamp flickering 
at her feet — even in the frowsy lock-ups, 
where tipsy mujicks can be heard yelling all 
day and night. 

The behavior of the people in the streets is 
quiet and civil. If a Russian knocks against 
you he begs your pardon with a sincere show 
of contrition ; if he sees your nose turning 
white in the cold weather, he picks up a 
handful of snow and rubs it with brotherly 
officiousness till the circulation is restored. 
All along the populous streets pedlars saun- 
ter selling dried mushrooms, cotton handker- 
chiefs, religious prints, white bread, and 
vareniches (cheese fritters) ; but none of them 
shout except the Greeks, who each make : 
noise enough for a dozen. Pigeons infest i 
the roadways with impunity, for they ares 
held sacred ; even if a Russian were starving 
it would not occur to him to knock one of 
these birds on the head and cook it. Danc- 
ing bears are also to be seen in great num- 
bers, and though not sacred are great favor- 
ites, and always draw crowds, who laugh at 
their antics like children. 

There is no man so easy to amuse as a 
Russian. In the popular theatres, which 
stand on about the same level as London 
' penny gaffs,' he testifies his merriment by 
shrieks till the tears run down his cheeks, 
and it is not rare to see him in the streets 
roaring before some farcical French print ex- 
posed in a shop window. The more inde- 
cent these prints are the better for his taste.. 



a. 

: 

. Il 
V. 

i 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAT. 



7 



and some ■windows exhibit pictures of the I 
kind that are reserved for the secret albums 
of the dissolute in other countries. Russians , 
are also fanatically fond of music, and all the 
tea-houses are provided with some kind of 
organ on the musical-box system. These in- 
struments are manufactured at Moscow, and 
are accounted better than those of Switzer- 
land, the larger ones, such as enliven the big [ 
tea-houses, playing as many as a hundred 
tunes and costing many hundreds of pounds. | 
An organ of this sort makes as much noise 
as a full orchestra. 

In the smaller tea-houses the organ tunes 
are frequently varied of an evening by the 
performance of some strolling minstrel in 
Caucasian costume, who strums on a trian- 
gular guitar the melodies of Lithuania and 
Little Russia. Very sweet melodies these 
are, and Chopin introduced many of them 
into his waltzes. The Caucasian minstrel, 
dressed in a black velvet tunic adorned on 
either breast with rows of silvered cartridge- 
tubes (into which he puts tobacco in time of 
peace), generally begins with the plaintive 
airs which the roussalkas (water-fairies) are 
supposed to sing as they lure their admirers 
into deep water"; he goes on by and by to the 
twanging war songs which console men for 
broken heads ; but as evening advances he is 
always called upon for a vritska, or dance, 
and. the tea-tables being pushed aside, the 
natives prepare for a hop of the wildest kind. 
It is a veritable French can can, more un- 
bridled if anything than that of the Quartier 
Latin ; and when joined in by Russian ser- 
vant-girls with big boots and stolid faces it 
is irresistibly comic. Some girls, however, 
dance with grace and keep time to the music 
by rapping their heels on the floor like clog 
"lancers. 

Bells are another of the Russian's de- 
lights ; and on Sunday mornings the riot of 
chimes, triple peals, and bob-majors that 
ring from church domes is enough to glad- 
den the most enthusiastic lover of campanol- 
ogy. Moscow is the place where these bells 
are cast, and most of them are Sent to the holy 
city of Kiew to be blessed. A church never 
seems to think it has too many bells. 

Thieves and policemen are the great pests 
of Russian towns, but especially policemen. 
Russians arc not thieves by nature, judging 
by their honesty in country districts, where 
there are uo police ; but once they get into 
towns the evil example set them by official 
persons and the venal connivance they can 
obtain from the police prove too tempting. 
A man who has resided some time in 
Bnssia even grows to doubt whether the 
notions of me am and luuin are comprehend- 
ed there as they are in other countries. 
If you pay a visit and leave a cloak on the 
seat of your carriage, that cloak is gone 
when you come out. If you walk out with 
a dog unchained, the dog vanishes round a 
street corner. Shopkeepers are afraid to 
place articles of value in their windows. 
Householders are liable to have their horses 
and carriages stolen if they do not keep a 
sufficient number of stable servants, and take 
care to see before going to bed that one at 
least of these menials is sober. A man who 
goes out for a night-stroll unarmed may be 
set upon within sight of a droschky stand 
and stripped of every article he wears, in- 1 
eluding shirt and small clothes. The drosch- 1 
ky drivers will not give him a helping-hand ; 
they will rather start off altogether in 
a panic lest they should be summoned to give 
evidence ; as for the police, they hurry up ! 
afterwards, and make th" despoiled man pay 
twice the value of the things he has lost in 
fees for investigation. 

It need scarcely be said that a person influ- 
ential enough to make himself unpleasant to 
the police gets back his lost property in no 
time ; the police will even restore him the 
equivalent if they cannot recover the actual 
articles. A Frenchman of rank who had left 
an opera-glass in a box at the Odessa opera 



missed it, as a matter of course, and men- 
tioned his loss to the Civil Governor, who 
took up the matter forthwith. It appeared, 
however, that the article had been purloined 
by a free-lance having no connection with 
the police ; so an official waited upon the 
Frenchman with a glass three times as good 
as the one he had lost, saying that the au- 
thorities would consider themselves dis- 
graced if a stranger lost anything in their 
country — a speech which must have given 
the Frenchman a rosy idea of Russian hon- 
esty. 

Merchants and tradesmen often pay thief- 
insurance money to the police ; but as the 
thieves can generally afford to pay still more 
for the privilege of being let alone, the insur- 
ance is only accepted ad valorem, so to say. 
For instance, a man may insure his watch, 
great-coat, and dog, but not his safe if burg- 
lars can manage to rifle it. Besides, the 
police do not play fair, and continually shield 
themselves by pretending that there are too 
many independent rogues about who meanly 
work on their own sole account. One comfort 
is that the Russian who waylays and strips you 
seldom does you bodily injury. He is a gen- 
tle thief, who pulls off your furred boots as 
considerately as if they were his own which 
you had put on by mistake. It takes time to 
accustom one's self to Russian character ; but 
you end by learning that the Russian ap- 
pears in his softest light when he is bettering 
himself in some way at your expense. 

Improbable as it may sound, governors of 
gaols often let out prisoners on purpose that 
they may thieve. Last year the Moscow pa- 
pers reported the case of a celebrated burglar, 
who, having been lodged in the penitentiary, 
was one night caught ' cracking the crib ' of 
a wealthy merchant. This led to inquiries, 
and the burglar confessed that, having 
planned his robbery before entering gaol, he 
had spoken about it to one of the turnkeys, 
who had let him out on condition of going 
with him and sharing the proceeds. The 
turnkey did not deny this, but said he had 
acted under instructions from the governor, 
who had bargained to have the lion's share. 
The governor in his turn tried to throw the 
blame on the police, alleging that they had 
given him orders to let out the prisoner for 
some purpose not stated ; but the story was 
disbelieved and the governor was dismissed. 
Soon afterwards the burglar was tried by a 
jury and acquitted, but the turnkey was not 
even indicted. 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE BIUSKATSTAKTINE HUSSARS. 

In a number of villages dotted about over 
the steppe within a dozen versts of Odessa, 
troops and half-troops of the Briskatstartine 
Hussars were quartered before the war. It 
is the custom to station Russian cavalry in 
villages because of the facilities for getting 
forage. There is a cavalry barrack inside 
Odessa which serves as depot, and where at 
this moment a major of the Briskatstartines 
is drilling and clothing droves of shy tow- 
haired recruits sent to him from as far as 
Esthonia, Livonia, Jaroslav, and Arkhan- 
gelsk for consignment to the seat of war. 

This major we shall call Strengmann. He 
is a half-German from Courland— poor, hard- 
worked, as good a soldier as ever wore spurs, 
but one who will never rise above his present 
grade, because he fulfils its duties too well 
and because he is not a nobleman. An offi- 
cer does not count in Russian society until he 
reaches the rank of lieutenant-colonel ; and, 
though the son of a high-class Ischinovnilc 
must pass for form's sake through the subal- 
tern grades, he is generally detached on staff 
duty till he can be hoisted to the rank befit- 
ting his birth. Strengmann's colonel, Prince 
Topoff, is just twenty-eight; the lieutenant- 
colonel, Prince Tripoff, recently kept his 
twenty-sixth birthday, between two defeats 
near Kars. 

Strengmann was never on familiar terms 



with these gentlemen, who lived in high 
state in houses of their own at Odessa and 
who treated him with courteous haughtiness. 
They never invited him to dinner, and he did 
not expect they should. Strengmann has 
never sat at an aristocratic table in his life. 
When he went to make his reports to Top- 
off or Tripoff he usually found them in bed, 
sleepy after an agreeable night's baccarat at 
the Club of Nobles. They would keep him 
standing while he told his business, then sign 
his reports without a word, and dismiss him 
with a nod. On reviews and other gala oc- 
casions the two princes used to figure at the 
head of their regiment in glittering uniforms 
of sky-blue and silver ; but at other times the 
management of the regiment , in all but finan- 
cial matters, was left wholly in Strengmann's 
hands. The finances Prince Topoff managed 
with his private steward, as the custom is 
among Russian colonels. It was in keeping 
with these arrangements that when the war 
broke out and a chance of glory appeared 
Topoff and Tripoff should have been sent off 
to take it, while Strengmann remained be- 
hind. 

To be sure, if the elegant Topoff and the 
fascinating Tripoff had been relegated to 
depot duty they could never have succeeded 
as Strengmann does in co-ordinating the 
polyglot elements of which a Russian regi- 
ment is composed. As a matter of policy 
natives of the north are sent into regiments 
quartered south, and vice versa. Soldiers are 
also sorted, as far as possible, according to 
their size and complexion. Under Nicholas 
there was a hussar regiment altogether made 
up of dark-haired men pitted with the small- 
pox, and another of light-haired men in the 
same case. There was a regiment whose 
soldiers all had fair hair, slim figures, and 
blue eyes ; and another where swarthy fea- 
tures and eagle noses were the rule. 

These happy assortments have been less 
strictly adhered to under the present reign, 
but enough is done in the way of sizing to 
bring men of twenty different dialects into 
each regiment, and thereby greatly to obviate 
the risks of mutiny. Strengmann knows a 
few dozen words out of every language spo- 
ken from the Oural Mountains to the Cauca- 
sus, and when he cannot piece a whole sen- 
tence together he makes up for deficient parts 
of speech with so many strokes from a cane 
which he is always switching behind his 
back. He ought not to beat his soldiers, but 
he does, because he has found out that cane 
is the only tongue universally understood. 
His adjutant, depot-captain, and lieutenant 
have likewise made this discovery. So have 
the sergeants and corporals ; and, as there 
is no one to prevent all these officers from 
conducting discipline in their own way, they 
deal their blows right and left. 

One word about blows in Russia. A no- 
bleman who should strike a mujick or a sol- 
dier in anger would be obliged to pay a sum 
of money to escape the consequences, which 
might be serious. Since the Emancipation a 
ukase has abolished the knout, the rattan, 
and even the birch in State schools. Noble- 
men have been especially ordered to abstain 
from assaults ; and an infringement of this 
rule, if not compounded by the victim, might 
lead to the nobleman being degraded from 
his rank in the Tschinn by the marshal of 
the nobility in his district. But mujicks 
continue to pummel one another, and to be 
pummelled by their superiors who are not of 
noble blood, for this is custom. The police- 
man thumps the droschky-driver, and the 
driver thumps the ostler ; the ostler thumps 
the beggar, and the beggar thumps whom he 
can. Blows cause no bad blood. Streng- 
mann thwacks his soldiers without mercy 
but without wrath, and they yell without 
stint but without rancor. 

Here is a long-haired Livonian who is 
bleating like a calf in the barrack-yard be- 
cause he has been taken away from his vil- 
lage, which he will not see again for a dozen 



8 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



years. What would be the use of sending 
him to snooze in the guard -room. ? A few 
touches with the cane serve the much more 
practical purpose of despatching him skip- 
ping towards the barber, who will clip his 
poll and pass him on to the clothing ser- 
geant, who will rig him out in boots and a 
gray coat which will engross his attention for 
the rest of the day. 

Here, again, are a batch of soldiers who 
have slept out of barracks and been brought 
in drunk ; and another batch who are being 
dragged in by the police for looting in shops. 
Expostulation would be of no use, and im- 
prisonment, if systematically applied, would 
soon have the effect of clearing out the bar- 
racks. So the major's awful cane is set go- 
ing, and the culprits make no complaints. 

The soldiers like Strengmanu fairly well, 
and he is good to them after a fashion, like 
that of a keeper with young bears. He 
knows that soldiers must get drunk, for they 
have nothing else to do, and must loot, for 
they have often not enough to eat. Their 
barracks is a fearful place of stenches, moodi- 
ness, and dirt. The soldiers have no bed- 
ding, but sleep on wooden cots wrapped up 
in their cloaks. Their food is tchi, served 
twice a day with an occasional lump of beef 
in it, and a pound of black bread, ill-baked, 
because damp bread weighs more than dry 
and brings so much profit to the baker. 

On pay-day a soldier is supposed to receive 
one or two kopecks ; but the majority of 
them are on permanent stoppages because of 
articles of their kit which they have sold to 
buy drink with, or because of alleged bar- 
rack damages committed while drunken. 
As not one soldier in a hundred can read, the 
account-book which the paymaster fills up 
for him every month is a volume of cryptog- 
raphy ; and lie can be made to pay for a pair 
of boots a dozen times over without being 
any the wiser. When by chance an atom of 
pay is doled out it goes to the canteen imme- 
diately. So does the money which a soldier 
can earn by picking up an odd job or two by 
working for landowners or tradesmen in 
towns. 

Nothing can stop" a soldier from accepting 
these jobs with or without leave. Some- 
times in harvest a regiment will melt clean 
away, and scouts will be employed for a 
month in riding after the runaways and 
whipping them back to barracks like a pack of 
straggling hounds. More commonly, how- 
ever, the colonel, or rather his steward, con- 
tracts for hiring out a few hundred men at a 
time for harvesting, and puts two-thirds of 
the money into his pocket. The other third 
comes to him through the canteen, which is 
his property. It is the colonel who clothes, 
feeds, and pays his regiment and keeps the 
barracks in repair ; so perhaps Prince Top- 
off 's steward would be able to explain how 
the bread, boots, and barracks of the Brisk- 
atstartine Hussars are such sorry things, and 
how the soldier's pay generally comes to 
nothing as above said. 

If a stranger visit the barracks of the Pre- 
obajentski Guards at St. Petersburg he will 
see quarters which are all that such places 
should be. The rooms shine with kaolin 
varnish, the men's kits are magnificent, the 
rations are of good weight and wholesome, 
the drains emit no odors, and pay comes in 
regularly. But then the Czar often visits 
the barracks of his favorite regiment, which 
have become a show-place for foreigners. 

And every time the Czar announces his in- 
tention of visiting another barrack that place 
immediately becomes a show too. When 
his Majesty went to Odessa the Colonel of 
the Briskatstartines spent several thousand 
pounds in making his men and their quarters 
look sumptuous. For three days the soldiers 
lived in clover — new clothes, good dinners, 
money in their pockets, vodki to drink, and 
clean rugs to lie down upon. No wonder 
their loyalty was pleasantly stimulated to- 
wards the Sovereign whose presence could 



conjure up such blessings ; but as soon as 
the well-intentioned but not ubiquitous mon- 
arch had turned his back things relapsed into 
their old groove, which is one of squalor. 
The money that is set down in the estimates 
for the keep of a regiment is amply sufficient 
if it reached its destination ; but a part some- 
how sticks in the War Office ; another lump 
gets lost between the fingers of the general 
commanding the division ; the brigade gen- 
eral next mislays a portion ; finally the col- 
onel comes, who thinks he should be a zany 
if he did not levy his due commission upon 
the remainder. 

The impulse thus given from above extends 
to the lowest officer who is entrusted with a 
single rouble for regimental use. Major 
Strengmann filches all he can because he 
does not get his pay regularly ; the captain 
follows suit, and the sergeant-major plays 
the same card. The surgeon who directs the 
infirmary sends in a long bill for medicines, 
and gives his patients vodki, which cures 
them quite as well. The quartermaster 
pockets the money that should go to mend 
the drains ; the adjutant gets a bonus from 
the contractors who supply rotten wheat and 
tainted meat. 

Say that from fire or some other cause a 
part of the barracks becomes so damaged as 
to require repair. The quartermaster esti- 
mates the cost at 10 per cent, more than is 
needed, the major claps on 10 percent, more, 
the colonel another 10 per cent. , and so on till 
the War Office is reached. Here the tschinov- 
niks, having taxed the bill, allow about two- 
thirds of the sum asked (though they enter 
the whole on their books), and the money 
passing through the series of hands already 
mentioned eventually readies the quarter- 
master under the form of a trifle not suffi- 
cient for the purpose in hand. So the re- 
pairs are effected in a shoddy fashion, if at 
all ; and some day one hears that a high 
wind has blown down a whole wing of the 
barracks and killed two or three score of 
men in it. 

But there is no free press to take note of 
these things, so the old game goes on. Those 
who remember how the British soldier was 
robbed not more than forty years ago, when 
newspapers were already pretty plainspokeu, 
may reckon what chances there are of the 
Russian military administration being im- 
proved under a system of government which 
is about a hundred years behind what the 
English circumlocution departments were in 
1830. Meanwhile, the Russian soldier is 
not discontented in the midst of his filth 
and hardships. He plods on like one who 
is undergoing man's fated lot, and in war 
he fights like a hero for the men who plunder 
him, happy if he can win a copper medal with 
a smart ribbon which he will sport when he 
goes back to his village to the admiration of 
his somnolent, ill- washed sweetheart. 

CHAPTER VII. 

A VICTORIOUS GENERAL. 

One of Prince Topoff 's predecessors in the 
colonelcy of the Briskatstartine Hussars was 
Prince Falutinski, now general, and com- 
monly known as the hero of the Daghestan 
war. He is a splendid-looking personage, 
six feet high, well whiskered, and not yet 
fifty. He is perfumed with musk and wears 
two or three diamond rings. His eyes are 
soft and his manners charming ; he has been 
employed in diplomacy, he has been gov- 
ernor of a province, he is a privy councillor, 
and acted for a while as manager-general of 
the Imperial theatres. No man is appointed 
to this high post who has not first proved his 
science on fields of battle ; and General Falu- 
tinski is universally admitted to have dis- 
played at once tact and courage in his delicate 
duties of engaging Italian prime-donne and 
French comics. It is only a captious mind 
that could contend there is anything unmili- 
tary in such functions. General Falutinski, 
in his glittering uniform all covered with 



stars, was much more potent in maintain- 
ing harmony among rival songstresses than 
any puny civilian could have been ; and as 
to the fiddlers in the orchestra, who but a 
general could have made these gentlemen 
tremble in their shoes when they once threat- 
ened to strike because of an unpopular con- 
ductor ? 

But every man, except the Czar, has his 
failings, and the general had once, perhaps, 
the defect of bragging too much. It was 
not, however, the ponderous pragmatical 
brag which makes victorious Germans so 
offensive, nor yet that vaporing French bom- 
bast which is so easy to see through. It was 
brag which those hearing it took for solid 
truth. The General impressed everybody 
with a sense of his country's power and of 
his own unlimited worth ; he appeared to be 
earnest and thoughtful ; one fancied, after 
listening to him, that Russia was exercising 
a wonderful self-control in not launching her 
legions to subjugate all opponents of her 
philanthropic policy. 

Philanthropy and Russian policy were in 
Falutinski's mouth convertible terms. He 
ecstatized innumerable journalists and senti- 
mental politicians by means of them ; he 
even succeeded in puzzling some second-rate 
statesmen, who were more pervious to his 
personal fascination than alive to the inter- 
ests of the countries they were paid to serve. 
Russia never commits the mistake of getting 
her foreign business transacted by square- 
toed respectability. Falutinski had the well- 
bred haughtiness which keeps the vulgar at a 
distance, the grace in trifling which pleases 
women, and that affable art of appearing to 
be confidential which dupes persons on the 
look out for ' early information ' — to be used 
in Parliament, on 'Change, or in the press. 

Among all who could serve him by influ- 
encing public opinion the General squan- 
dered the small coin of courtesy and kind 
words most lavishly ; so that he never went 
anywhere without making himself a useful 
friend or two. Besides, his interlocutors 
were always bound to remember that he 
was the great Falutinski of the Daghestan 
war — not a commonplace person by any 
means, nor one who could be suspected of 
brag. He had led his victorious army over 
the sand plains of Anketer, had crossed the 
swollen river Terek in face of a murderous 
fire, and routed the hordes of the fierce Bag- 
allyou Khan in their fastnesses. Special cor- 
respondents had written in the most lauda- 
tory terms of these acts of valor and skill ; 
and these independent observers have so 
much to do with the making of military 
reputations nowadays that it was no wonder 
Falutinski should have been classed high in 
the estimation of the world and in his own. 
He was not observed to study strategy in 
his leisure hours, for he was too busy with 
diplomatists and opera-singers as above said ; 
and it was not even proved that he had ever 
read military books in his youth, for he was 
a colonel at twenty-five, and had till then 
chiefly distinguished himself by leading the 
cotillons at Court balls. But a man who has 
innate military genius need not pore over 
books as Von 'Moltke does ; and when riding 
on horseback at the State reviews in the 
Admiralty Square of St. Petersburg Falutin- 
ski looked the very beau-ideal of a warrior. 
Indeed, if he and Von Moltke had been 
placed side by side, women, who are known 
to be infallible judges of masculine charac- 
ter, would have had no hesitation in decid- 
ing which of the two was best fitted to lead 
soldiers to victory. 

The plain truth is, however, that the Da- 
ghestan war was one of those Russian military 
games of which outsiders do not always sec 
most. We forget how long ago this philan- 
thropic crusade took place, and for what 
precise reason it was that Bagallyou Khan 
incurred the wrath of the Holy Empire ; but 
the man had to be chastised, and the Grand 
Duke Rurik was sent to do it. He chose 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



9 



Falutinski, iiis boon friend, as chief of the I 
staff, and with an army of 30,000 men, ever 
BO many guns, and a dozen hospitably enter- 
tained correspondents, marched to the shores 
of the Caspian Sea, where Bagallyou Khan 
smote him hip and thigh. 

But this was only the outset of the cam- 
paign, and the world heard little of the de- ! 
feat ; for the Grand Duke courteously in- 
formed the correspondents that he would 
prefer they should not report Russian failures 
for the present, owing to State reasons. ' 
The correspondents thought this request 
most reasonable. It was made to them with 
■very good grace after a dinner in the Grand \ 
Duke's tent, and Falutinski, as they well 
knew, had charge of the post-office through 
which their letters must have gone. 

Meanwhile, the Grand Duke sent oft to St. 
Petersburg an account of his first battle, in 
which he forgot to mention that he had been 
beaten ; so that a Cabinet courier arrived, 
bringing decorations and other honors for 
him^nd Falutinski just as they had finished 
fighting their second battle, in which they 
were more badly worsted than the first time. 
In this second disastrous affair the Grand 
Duke's kitchen battery was captured, along 
with his French cook ; and rumors came 
from the enemy's camp of atrocities commit- 
ted on this foreigner, who had been made to 
swallow six quarts of the soup he had pre- 
pared for the ducal table. 

It now turned out that his Imperial High- 
ness and his staff commander had erred 
through not being very clear as to their geog- 
raphy. They had mistaken the exact posi- 
tion of a river, a chain of mountains, or 
something of that sort ; so that having made 
a gallant dash onwards they found themselves 
upon a sand plain of several hundred miles 
in extent, instead of in the heart of the ene- 
my's country as they had imaginatively 
hoped. 

The Grand Duke Rurik. who was a brave 
young man, very headstrong and sentiment- 
al, was for pushing on over the plain to be 
beaten again and die ; but Falutinski, though 
equally courageous, opined that it would be 
better to conquer and live. He knew that 
Russia, having once begun the war, would 
go on with it regardless of cost ; and thought 
he might as well finish it by hook or crook 
as leave the credit to some other general. So 
the correspondents were told to be patient, 
for the end was not yet ; and Falutinski held 
numerous councils with the Grand Duke, af- 
ter which, in the dead of the night, parlia- 
mentarians were sent off with a flag of truce 
to Bairallyou Khan's camp. 

Soon an armistice was announced ; Falu- 
tinski was missed for a few days, and the 
correspondents learned that he had gone in 
person to carry an ultimatum to the barbar- 
ous chief demanding of him an unconditional 
surrender. One bright morning, however, 
he returned, declaring that Bagallyou Khan 
would not hear reason, and once more prep 
arations were made for a grand set to. 

Somehow, though, from the time of Falu- 
tinski- visit to the Khan things began to go 
badly with that barbarian's army. His sol- 
diers left off guarding an important ford ; 
some others were surprised by a force ten 
times superior to them, and were cut to 
pieces ; another detachment who should have 
held a mountain pass got into the wrong pass 
by error, and, being attacked in the rear, had 
to capitulate. 

The correspondents now began to write 
home in fine style. Falutinski's strategy 
was extolled as a thing at once deep and 
beautiful. The Russian soldiers, decimated 
by the previous encounters, but ever dogged- 
ly brave, picked up fresh heart, and one 
morning Europe heard with feelings of won- 
der and admiration of Falutinski's glorious 
march over the plains of Anketer. 

It is always grand to see a soldier sur- 
mounting natural obstacles ; but, according 
to the strategists who reviewed Falutinski's 



proceedings on paper, no general ever had 
defied drought, heat, mosquitoes, and sav- 
ages with such a combination of tactical wis- 
dom and devil-may-care recklessness as he. 
Then came the final pitched battle on the 
river Terek, where the flower of Bagallyou 
Khan's army bit the dust by moonlight. It 
was a thunderlike stroke of genius, wrote the 
correspondents. The valiant general fell 
upon the infidels like Sennacherib, started 
them out of sleep, hewed, slew, and pulver- 
ized them, ultimately scattering their rem- 
nants as dust in a high wind. 

In this historic fight the Grand Duke re- 
covered his kitchen battery and French cook. 
There was glory enough and to spare for all. 
Six standards, the sacred kettle of the tribe, 
and four of Bagallyou Khan's plumpest 
wives were among the spod ; but the chief 
himself was not to be found, to the great 
regret of all concerned. 

He turned up a few months later at St. 
Petersburg. Then it was learned that he 
had not come as an impertinent rebel with 
bristling moustache, but as a humble suppli- 
ant for Imperial grace, confessing his sins 
and steadfastlj r purposing to lead a new life. 
Accordingly, a grand levee was appointed 
for his public obeisance, and his victors, the 
Grand Duke Rurik and General Falutinski, 
stood on either side of the throne upon the 
solemn occasion. All present were much 
touched to see the proud Khan walk in erect 
with the dignity of misfortune, and, bending 
his knee before the throne, make a gesture 
as of heartfelt readiness to let his head be 
chopped off ; but he was graciously bidden 
to rise, and Muscovite clemency was carried 
to the point of allowing him a high rank in 
the Imperial service, a palace on the Neva, 
and a handsome pension to keep up his state. 

He became a devoted subject after that, 
and, adapting himself to the civilization of 
the West as well as to the religion of his 
conquerors, drank champagne like a true 
Christian and learned to play whist. It is 
pleasant to add that he and his old enemy 
Falutinski lived on terms of mutual esteem 
and friendship as became valorous men. 
They did not speak much when they met, 
but an almost imperceptible contraction in 
their left eyelids testified to that inner emo- 
tion which proceeds from the contact of na- 
tures fitted to understand and admire each 
other. 

The moral of this little story is that diplo- 
macy is no bad adjunct to force in certain 
campaigns. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

A PROSPEROUS MERCHANT. 

In one of the dingiest pereouhks, or slums, 
of Odessa stands the office of Simon Iscarioti- 
vitch, a Jew worth several millions of rou- 
bles. His private house is situated in a finer 
quarter of the city, and b* transacts business 
there too as a money-lender. 

His sources of income are multifarious, 
and he calls himself vaguely a merchant, 
without saying merchant of what. He be- 
longs to the first class of the Commercial 
Guild. Merchants of this first class have to 
declare a capital of £2,400, and to pay a 
yearly license of £105 12s. (600 roubles) ; 
those of the second declare a capital of £920, 
and pay £42 4*. 10(Z. ; and those of the third 
are supposed to be worth £384, and pay £12 
11«. 2d. Beneath these three guilds there is 
a class of petty traders who pay from £3 to 
£4 a year — a heavy tax to many of them ; 
and you might suppose Simon Iecariotivitch 
to belong to this last category, if you judged 
by the shabbiness of his office. 

But Simon is often absent from Odessa, 
travelling among the porneschiki (landowners 
on the steppes) ; and it is in the course of 
these visits to the squires that he gets through 
most of his business, which requires no 
showy counting-house. He is a small snuf- 
fling man dressed in what looks like a de- 
cayed dressing-gown and in flat, round hat 



scabby with age. He sells tea, French nov- 
els, agricultural machinery, vodki, silk, tur- 
quoises, pianos, and musical boxes ; and he 
buys corn, wool, horses, and ponies. A little 
transaction which he had two years ago with 
Prince Wiskoff will explain one of his favorite 
methods of assisting aristocrats in difficulties 
and bettering himself at the same time. 

One scorching summer day, when the 
Prince was drowsy from heat and ennui, the 
Jew's telega, dusty from travel, scampered 
into the courtyard of the ramshackle palace. 
A visit of any sort is so pleasant to a rusticat- 
ing prince that he would welcome a creditor 
sooner than see nobody ; and Serge Wiskoff, 
who knew Simon right well, saw many a 
reason to rejoice at his coming. However, 
he maintained the dignity befitting a Chris- 
tian in the presence of an infidel ; and Simon, 
having humbly kissed his hand, proceeded by 
circumlocutory methods to hint that he was 
ready to buy the Prince's crop of standing 
corn. The Prince was equally ready to sell 
it him, and the following year's crop as well. 
Simon took time to consider, but at length 
said ho would buy next year's crop too. 
Then the Prince said, ' Why not buy three, 
four, five years' crops ? ' And so the pair 
haggled till, by dint of coaxing supplications 
on the Prince's part and steady but doleful 
bargaining on the Jew's, who swore he 
should be ruined, Simon eventually agreed to 
take five years' crops at something like a 
third of their value in the market. 

The Prince was greatly excited, for the 
sum offered was enough to allow of his start- 
ing at once for Paris with his wife and hav- 
ing a year's fun there — the only thing on 
earth for which he cared. Accordingly a 
printed form of agreement was extracted from 
Simon's greasy travelling bag, the Prince 
filled it up and appended his signature, where- 
upon Simon, having taken possession of the 
document, drew from the inner breast-pocket 
of his blue caftan, not a roll of bank-notes, 
but a parcel of the Prince's dishonored bills 
from divers Western capitals, which he re- 
stored to their owner with an obsequiousness 
most cringing. 

The disappointment was awful, and the 
Prince used bad language ; the barina, too, 
who had come into the room and had already 
commenced building French hotels in the 
air, clenched her plump hands and talked of 
having the infidel tallyman whipped off the 
estate. But Simon was lamentably humble : 
no creature alive can be so humble as a Rus- 
sian Jew. He had bought the bills for good 
money, whined he, knowing that a Wiskoff 's 
bond was worth gold, and he was sure their 
high nobilities would believe that he had 
thought to render them a real service in act- 
Lng as he had done. Their high nobilities 
were in a vile temper, but they had to sub- 
mit. There was luckily a residue to be paid 
in real money — two thousand roubles or so 
— which consoled them for their misadven- 
ture by giving them the wherewithal to live 
high and fast for six weeks, which they re- 
ligiously did. 

"But Simon's profits on this affair were not 
ended here. In the ensuing August a long 
caravan of carts set out from the Prince's 
estate, carrying the corn to Odessa. The 
Prince's steward, a sly, fiat-nosed Kalmuck, 
had charge of the carts ; and he and Simon 
were in league, having had a secret and mu- 
tually agreeable interview before the corn 
was bought. So it somehow befell that the 
caravan tarried on its road, then got lost in a 
steppe fog, then went many scores of versts 
out of its way, and finally was overtaken by 
the September rains, which spoiled a good 
half of the wheat. Moreover, when Odessa 
was reached it was raining still, and there 
were no barns to be let. 

Simon and the Kalmuck walked down to 
the port together, and satisfied themselves as 
to this fact. Meanwhile the caravan, with 
its oxen and peasants, could not be left to 
take care of itself in the streets, where the 



10 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



police were already flocking to levy black- 
mail of the carters for obstructing the thor- 
oughfare ; so the Kalmuck was fain to beg 
that the Jew would lind him a storehouse ou 
any terms, which the Jew kindly did by pro- 
curing him a barn of his own which had been 
empty all the while, as the Kalmuck well 
knew. The next thing to do was to sift the 
good wheat from the bad, for the Jew had 
not agreed to buy damaged corn. He had 
covenanted for the number of quarters of 
wheat which the Prince's crops were sup- 
posed to yield, not for the crops as they 
stood, and it had further been agreed that 
the corn should be delivered within some 
covered building ; hence the necessity for the 
Kalmuck's getting a barn. 

When the corn had been inspected all that 
was not up to sample was naturally declined, 
and the question arose as to what should be 
done with the damaged quantity ? The Kal- 
muck readily decided that it was of no use 
to carry it back to the estate, and still less 
expedient to pay for keeping it stored in Odes- 
sa ; so, upon Simon's offering to buy it for 
a small sum as pigs' food, he accepted the 
small sum, privily minded to give no account 
of the same to his master, but to declare that 
the damaged corn had been thrown into the 
sea by order of some market inspectors. As 
for Simon, he gave nothing to the pigs, but, 
shipping the damaged wheat on to a worth- 
less vessel, insured the cargo as good corn, 
and gave the Greek captain orders to run 
himself ashore- 1 — which was done, and Simon 
pocketed the insurance money. 

On the whole, it will be seen that the hon- 
est merchant played his cards well. Prince 
Wiskoff, having been unable to fulfil his en- 
gagement towards him with one year's crop, 
was obliged to make up the deficit (G pet- 
cent, interest added) with next year's ; but, 
as the next year brought fresh accidents 
which saddled him again with arrears, it 
came to pass that in parting with five years' 
harvests he was found to have virtually 
alienated eight, if not ten. 

Simon Iscariotivitch does many other 
strokes of business in this fashion. For in- 
stance, he purchases sheep of the pomeKchikx, 
and, having contrived with the stewards that 
a good number of them should be brought to 
Odessa diseased, buys these last for a trifle, 
as he did the bad corn, and sells them as 
prime mutton (by agreement with military 
authorities) to feed the Briskatstartine Hus- 
sars and other valiant regiments. He is also 
great at purchasing spavined ponies, which 
turn out to have not so much the matter with 
them once they get into his hands ; and ugly 
knock-kueed colts, which the pomenchiks, who 
sold them cheap, have the pleasure of seeing 
by-and-by spanking about the Boulevard of 
Odessa as first-rate Orloff trotters. 

In fact, Simon trades upon the incurable 
repugnance of Russian gentlemen to looking 
after their landed interests, and if his profits 
be so great the fault is theirs. He is a curi- 
ous, shambling man, whose sharpness in 
business is set off by a humility of demeanor 
difficult to describe and painful to witness. 
He fawns before a nobleman as if he were 
afraid of being kicked, and in this resembles 
most of his Russian co-religionists who are 
past middle age and have retained a scaring 
recollection of the days when kicking and 
cuffing were their common lot and when the 
law oppressed them with grinding disabili- 
ties. 

Up to the death of Nicholas Jews were not 
allowed to possess land, to give evidence in 
civil suits, to have synagogues, nor to inhabit 
the holy cities of Kiew and Moscow. They 
were obliged to wear a particular dress, and 
out of every Jewish family one child was al- 
ways taken by the State to be educated as a 
Christian at his parents' cost. 

It requires more than one lifetime to out- 
live the remembrance of such social inferi- 
ority, even when the law has removed it. 
Simon Iscariotivitch has now his synagogues, 



his Jewish schools, his municipal privileges, 
and he is suffered to celebrate the festivals of 
his Church with public displays ; and if any- 
body kicked him it would be a bad thing for 
the kicker. Sometimes a band of riotous 
university students in their cups will try 
their hands at the old game of assaulting a 
Jew, whereon that Jew begins to howl, and 
all the other Jews within earshot howl too, 
till, the streets being filled with their uproar, 
the culprits are summarily punished by a 
police-judge, in order that tranquillity may 
be restored. This howling device has been 
found of great protection to the long-suffer- 
ing community ; but, though it secures the 
Jews against ill-treatment, nothing has been 
able to diminish the contempt felt for them 
by all classes of Russians, but especially by 
the upper. 

They still labor under many disabilities not 
within the law. Simon's wealth is enor- 
mous, but he cannot hope to be ennobled. 
The nobles will not admit him to their clubs 
nor to their houses as a guest ; they would 
leave their stalls at the opera if he came and 
sat down among them ; they would not dine 
at his house for any consideration ; and if he 
were to send his sons into the army no exer- 
tions on his part and no amount of merit on 
that of the young Iscariotivitchs would ena- 
ble these latter to rise higher than subaltern's 
rank. 

As a consequence, Simon and his brethren 
hate the Tschinn with a bitterness all the more 
dangerous as two-thirds of the trade of 
Southern Russia, and at least one-third of 
that in the North, is in their hands. Being 
virtually tabooed from public functions, they 
have no public spirit ; and, holding no land, 
they do not care what befalls the soil and the 
haughty lords of it. The large sums of spe- 
cie amassed by them are invested out of the 
country, and do nothing to promote native 
industry ; but of late years they have begun 
to show themselves alive to the political uses 
of wealth, and it is more than suspected that 
most of the agrarian agitation which is mak- 
ing the peasant minds simmer is subsidized 
by Jews. 

Simon Iscariotivitch never goes on his 
travelling rounds without dropping into the 
ears of peasants cunning theories which 
would have caused him to lie hanged twenty- 
five years ago, and which even now would 
bring him to trouble if there were any short- 
hand writer present to take them down. At 
this time of war Simon contributes his share 
towards promoting popular distress and dis- 
content by refusing to accept Government 
paper for less than 30 per cent, discount. He 
predicts in whispers a national bankruptcy, 
and will not advance a bank-note to impecu- 
nious nobles on bills or land mortgage, but 
only on such portable security as plate and 
diamonds. Exclusive laws and fanatical 
prejudices have made him an alien on Rus- 
sian soil, and he acts as aliens ever do among 
a hostile people. 

CHAPTER IX. 

JUDICIAL BUSINESS. 

TnE first article of the French Civil Code 
says, ' No man is supposed to be ignorant of 
the law.' If a Russian were expected to 
know the laws of his country he would have 
to master twenty-one folio volumes, contain- 
ing some 2,000 pages apiece. But, then, in 
Russia every conceivable act of man is regu- 
lated by Imperial decree. 

Whenever some influential tschinovnik has 
found his private affairs disordered by the 
advance of progress, he has procured an Im- 
perial ukase to bar that progress. There are 
laws regulating the cut of one's beard, the 
fashion of one's hat and coat ; a man cannot 
light a cigar in the streets without peril of in- 
fringing some decree which might be en- 
forced against him by any rich man desirous 
of getting him into trouble. In other coun- 
tries everything that the law does not for- 



bid is allowed ; in Russia everything is for- 
bidden which the law does not expressly 
permit. 

People get out of this predicament by pur- 
chasing as much liberty as they require for 
their individual use, as Englishmen do gas 
and water. If the decrees were stringently 
enforced no man could breathe ; but the sys- 
tem of corruption serves as a check upon 
compression, just as smuggling does upon pro- 
hibitive tariffs. The Baltic Provinces are 
the onty parts of the empire where the ad- 
ministrative screw is systematically pressed 
down to the grinding of men's souls ; for 
Germans are formidable bureaucrats, and 
find more delight in making themselves 
disagreeable than in being bribed. But here 
despotism is tempered by the frequent as- 
sassination of tschinovniks, and the country 
is so profoundly disaffected that it will seize 
upon the first convenient opportunity for get- 
ting annexed to Germany. Everywhere else 
where the pure-bred, lazy, venal Russian sits 
in places of power a man jogs on fairly well 
till he crosses another man with a longer 
purse ; then he goes to the wall. 

There is no mistake about this ; it is the 
unwritten law which dominates over all the 
printed edicts in the twenty-one-volumed 
code. A tschinovnik who has a quarrel with 
another tschinovnik does not think of going 
to law about it ; he refers the dispute to the 
marshal of the nobility in his district, and this 
official, assisted, if need be, by the standing 
committee of nobles, arbitrates in private — 
sometimes equitably, sometimes not, accord- 
ing as there may or may not be reasons for 
putting the less influential party in the wrong. 

But when a tschinovnik falls out with an 
ordinary citizen, then one of two things oc- 
curs : either the tschinovnik's order stands by 
; him, in which case the other part} r collapses, 
or he is left to fight his own battle ; and then 
it becomes a question whether he can make 
head against an opponent who probably has 
an artel, or mutual relief society, behind him. 

Almost every Russian exercising a trade or 
profession belongs to an artel. The droschky 
drivers have one, so have the tea-house wait- 
ers. The Jews form an artel by themselves, 
besides belonging to their respective trade 
artels ; and they are the toughest opponents 
of all, from their loyalty in standing by one 
another. The Tschinn would not care to 
make common cause with one of its members 
who had a suit concerning private matters 
with a rich Jew ; the nobleman would rather 
be advised to compromise the quarrel, and 
would take the hint. 

Jews seldom go to law with one another : 
if impleaded by Russians of the trading class 
they win by force of money. If two Chris- 
tian traders go before the courts it must be 
for spite, for they well know that a suit will 
cost both of them ten times more than a pri- 
vate agreement. Bribes are not handed direct 
to the judges, but conveyed through the no- 
taries—an astute corporation. A judge of 
first instance, commonly a tschinovnik. is 
paid £40 a year, and has bought his office 
secretly for about £4,000. His income conse- 
quently depends on his perquisites ; and he 
must use the scales of justice in no metaphori- 
cal sense to weigh on which side the roubles 
lie. Like Lord Bacon, all these Russian 
judges might contend that they sell justice, 
not injustice ; for whichever way they may 
decide they have some Imperial decree to rest 
upon ; and if their judgments be quashed by 
a court of appeal, that court has law on its 
side too. A civil suit is, in fact, an auction 
in which the highest bidder prevails on the 
judge to select from the code the decree 
which he requires to put him in the right. 

Foreigners, when they first come to settle 
in the country, are very apt to be dragged 
into lawsuits by people who want to extort 
money from them. If a man resists the im- 
position, bribes a judge to uphold him, and so 
gets boldly out of the scrape, he is likely to 
be let alone for the future, just as in duelling 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



11 



countries a man -who has stood fire once is 
said to have fait tea prentes. 

In criminal causes defendants fare accord- 
ing' to the animosity and wealth of the per- 
sons who prosecute them. Russian judges 
have a kindly feeling for petty thieves, and, 
if not paid to punish them severely, can easily 
be cajoled into passing a light sentence. 
But, of course, a prisoner who throws him- 
self upon the mercy of the court must be per- 
fectly destitute ; for, if he were to hire an 
advocate without having bribed the judge, 
the latter would naturally make him smart 
for the oversight. The mistake is scarcely 
possible, however ; for an attorney would 
take care that the prisoner spent his money 
rightly. A judge can be bribed to acquit, 
but if he have lx-en already bribed to convict 
he can be bribed to pass a light sentence : or 
if he be pledged to inflict a heavy penalty, 
then the attorney would advise his client "to 
save his money, in order to bribe himself out 
of prison, or, failing that, to procure himself 
relaxations therein. 

Juries only sit in cases of felony and of the 
worst crimes of violence ; and they too are 
amenable to bribery and sentiment. He 
must be a dull advocate who cannot make a 
Russian jury weep. The well-known story 
of a jury who acquitted a prisoner because it 
was Easter eve, and they thought they could 
best solemnize the holy week by forgiving 
transgressions, can be capped by another of 
an Odessa jury who acquitted a wife-murderer 
because the deceased had beaten him for being 
tipsy. It has passed into a proverb that it is 
safer to kill a rich man outright than to maim 
him ; for if alive he can pursue his vengeance 
himself, whereas if he be dead his heirs may 
forget to spend money in assuring the con- 
viction of the murderer, who thereupon es- 
capes by pleading provocation. 

In a general way it is the rich who by their 
prosecutions keep the prisons and penal colo- 
nies of Siberia populated ; and they are terri- 
ble persons to offend in person or property. 
The civil and criminal laws are so inter- 
muddled that a breach of contract, a tres- 
pass, or a mere debt may be construed into a 
felony at the suit of a vindictive tschiuovnik ; 
and malice would be wreaked in manifold and 
horrible ways but for the artels which pro- 
tect the poor. As it is, an aitel has occasion- 
ally to spend enormous sums of money in res- 
cuing an innocent member from what would 
in any other country be deemed a frivolous 
and vexatious prosecution. 

In the country districts the peasant ry have 
a remedy against this sort of thing by burn- 
ing down the houses and ricks of the land- 
owners who oppress them ; and they ara so 
prompt to do this that a nobleman who is 
brutal towards townspeople becomes quite 
mild among his peasantry. 

Domestic servants are the worst sufferers 
from plutocratic spite, for, while most liable 
to give offence, they are defenceless, having 
no artels. There is an artel of cooks and 
another of coachmen in St. Petersburg, but 
footmen, maids, and valets have to take care 
of themselves. A confidential servant in- 
curs the wrath of his master and finds him- 
self arrested one morning on the easily 
proved charge of stealing. The fact that all 
servants steal, and that the culprit had been 
stealing for years before his master conde- 
scended to notice it, is of course not ac- 
cepted as an excuse , and it depends entirely 
on the master's readiness to bribe whether 
the poor wretch is sent to Siberia on the 
count of major felony or consigned to prison 
as a petty rogue. But if the minor count be 
admitted the valet soon discovers that his 
master's power over him does uot cease at 
the prison doors. By gilding the palm of the 
prison governor the master can have his do- 
mestic whipped for alleged breaches of gaol 
discipline, till the miserable fellow becomes 
supple as a glove and bewails the day when 
he was saucy. Great ladies sometimes try 
this curative system on their maids, and more 



than one French soubrette in St. Petersburg 
has discovered in prison what it costs to trade 
upon the secrets of a Russian grande dame's 
boudoir. 

That prisons should exist in Russia for the 
punishment of murderers and maimers is con- 
ceivable ; but, when one considers that pecu- 
lation is the very mainspring of all business 
in the country, it certainly seems odd that 
any judge should have the face to imprison a 
thief. Possibly the authorities are struck 
with the incongruity of this arrangement, 
for whenever the Czar travels he releases 
prisoners wholesale ; and these discharged 
ragamuffins are welcomed by the population 
as though they were brothers whose only 
crime had been ill-luck. 

A curious thing it is to see a Russian court 
of justice during the trial of criminal cases. 
The judges are in uniform and wear the 
medals of stars of some civil order of knight- 
hood on their breasts. The counsel wear 
uniforms too in their capacity as subalterns 
in the legal hierarchy. It looks to a foreigner 
as if he were witnessing a court -martial in 
which the thief was being tried by field-mar- 
shals and defended by a captain. The jury 
are tradesmen or petty squires, but it often 
happens that the majority can neither read nor 
write. They kneel when being sworn ; and 
give free rein to their emotions while the 
witnesses are deposing. The judges have to 
threaten them with fines when they all begin 
shouting " Oh ! ' and ' Ah ! ' together. Their 
distaste for convicting is so great that they 
will frequently sing out to a prisoner : ' Will 
you promise not to do it again '?' Once when 
a jury had been locked up three hours an im- 
patient judge sent an usher to see what they 
were doing, and it was found that they had 
all escaped through a window, to avoid giv- 
ing a verdict. 

CHAPTER X. 

FOHGED BANK-NOTES. 

In the town of K . of the province of 

Kharkov, Otto, the son of Herr Dicker, hotel- 
keeper, one morning received a parcel of 
forged bank-notes, in payment for a tun of 
Crimean wine supplied to the venerable 
Archimandrite. Forged notes are as common 
as genuine ones in Russia, and if Hen- 
Dicker had been a Russian he would have 
simply passed on the notes to some one else. 

Being a German, it behoved him to be cau- 
tious. First he scolded his sou for not hav- 
ing scrutinized the water-marks ; after which 
he pondered for a while whether he should 
treat the transaction as a dead loss, or go to 
the Archimandrite's major-domo, who had 
paid the notes, and ask him for others. 

He had the misfortune to choose the latter 
course, and was coldly received by the ma- 
jor-domo, who doubted whether the notes had 
been paid by himself. As the sum was rather 
"large. Herr Dicker became too persuasive, and 
was bundled out of the house. A few hours 
later, as he was brooding over the business 
aptitudes required in dealings with Russians, 
he received the visit of a police inspector 
and two underlings, who wanted to know why 
he had not made a declaration at the police- 
office of having forged notes in his posses 
sion ? Herr Dicker ought now with alacrity 
to have ordered up a bottle of his best. and. 
while regaling the inspector, he should have 
slipped into his hands as many genuine notes 
as he could spare ; meantime Otto Dicker 
should have refreshed the underlings in 
another room, and have made little presents 
to them also. Then all would have gone well 
with the German household. 

Unluckily, the German was in a bad tem- 
per, and began to talk nonsense about giving 
the Archimandrite s servant into custody. 
The inspector, seeing no signs of coin, threw 
off the conciliatory attitude he had adopted 
upon entering, and announced that he was 
going to search the premises. His two men, 
a pair of bullet-headed churls with gray coats 
and brass-kilted swords, thereupon went to 



work, and in less than an hour the German's 
house looked as if it had been ransacked by 
thieves. 

Dicker was made — and not gently either — 
to open every cupboard, desk, and box ; his 
clothes, his wife's and daughter's, were 
strewn over the floors ; the pockets of him- 
self and family were turned inside out ; finally 
the police went down to the cellars and set 
the barrel-cocks running to see whether these 
receptacles did really contain liquor, and not 
implements of forgery. 

Herr Dicker imprudently stamped about, 
yelling imprecations in the'dialect of Pomer- 
ania. He was exhorted to hold his peace. 
The police made up all his notes, money, and 
portable trinkets into a parcel with one of his 
own napkins, telling him that every article 
proved to be lawfully his would be restored 
to him. Then the inspector said sharply, 
' Now come along. ' ' Where to ?' asked Herr 
Dicker, with his hair-roots stiffening. ' To 
prison,' answered the inspector ; and off they 
all went, to the amusement of the people in 
the streets, who are always gratified at seeing 
a German in trouble. 

A Russian gaol is not built on any waste- 
ful plan of keeping prisoners warm and com- 
fortable. A black, mouldy house situate in 
one of the slums of the town, it is guarded 
by a dozen crop-headed soldiers and has a 
painted scutcheon with the Imperial double- 
headed eagle over the gate. There is a whip- 
ping post in the front yard. Thieves, mur- 
derers, boys, lunatics, women are all huddled 
together in a room of foul stenches warmed 
by a stove, and the only food served out to 
them is a pound of black bread in the morn- 
ing and a mess of rancid soup at midday. 
The sexes are separated at night. 

By day the prisoners busy themselves as 
they can. Some are driven out in gangs to 
repair the roads or clear the snow from the 
streets ; others make shoes or sculpture 
wooden toys ; and others do nothing but 
snooze in corners, sleeping off the effects of 
the vodki which they have bribed the ward- 
ers to buy. Acts of insubordination are pun- 
ished by whipping, and the women get as 
much of this punishment as the men. It 
is no longer customary for judges to sentence 
prisoners to be flogged, but gaol governors 
are empowered to maintain discipline by 
stripes ; and thus a servant girl, who is com- 
mitted for trial on a charge of thieving, often 
gets a smart flagellation or two at the hands 
of a stout-armed wardress by private arrange- 
ment between the governor and her mistress. 
In these gaols it is only well-to-do prisoners 
who are placed in solitary confinement. 

Herr Dicker being well-to-do was thrust 
into a cell furnished with a bundle of straw 
and floored with damp flags. Water dripped 
from the walls and rats poked their noses out 
of holes, staring at him in the twilight. He 
had a piece of black bread for supper, but re- 
mained from dusk to dawn without lights, 
for no candles were allowed. All this did not 
tame him, but made him gnash his teeth and 
swear to be even with the Archimandrite's 
servant. In the morning a hungry looking 
gaoler hinted that he could have a decent room 
and good food by paying for them. Herr 
Dicker shouted that he would pay nothing. 

Shortly afterwards he was called into an 
upper chamber to see an examining magistrate 
in a black uniform with pewter buttous, who 
significantly told him that justice was re- 
solved to make an example of those who 
uttered forged notes. Herr Dicker looked 
as if he were going to have a fit ; he was, in- 
deed, so blinded by wrath as not to notice 
that he was alone with the magistrate, and 
could consequently prove his innocence by 
the promise of a small cash payment. The 
dignitary gave him every chance by throw- 
ing out some feeling allusions to the discom- 
forts of being sent to work in the silver mines 
of Siberia ; but the dull German would take 
no hints, and it was too late when the magis- 
trate's clerk was summoned in to copy 



12 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



down the prisoner's depositions. Then the 
magistrate began browbeating as if he had 
got a confirmed rogue in his clutches. He 
abused Herr Dicker, and asked him if he 
would confess. ' Confess what ? ' asked the 
German. ' Oh, we'll bring you to your 
senses,' cried the tightly-buttoned little gen- 
tleman ; and, as the hotel-keeper would do 
nothing but protest his innocence, he was 
taken back to spend another day with the 
rats. 

Meanwhile Frau Dicker, a sagacious 
woman, bethought her that when a man falls 
into a pit or a Russian prison, the first thing 
to do is to pull him out without caring how 
he got there. Her husband's hotel was much 
frequented by officers who came thither to 
drink ; and, among others, the lieutenant- 
colonel, chief inspector of forage, owed a 
bill of 300 silver roubles for bottles of Rhen- 
ish wine. It grieved the German housewife 
to receipt this account unpaid, but she bravely 
did so ; and, moreover, put into a basket six 
bottles of Liebfraumilch (which the inspector 
of forage loved); then, having donned her best 
catskin cloak, she set out to see the colonel 
along with her daughter Lisa, a personable 
damsel, who cried as she went. 

The honest colonel was touched by the 
tears, the wine, and the receipted bill, and 
promised that the mistake which had led to 
Herr Dicker's arrest should be explained in 
the proper quarters. But it turned out that 
the hotel-keeper was in perilous plight ; for 
the Archimandrite was much shocked that 
his servant should have been accused of 
uttering forged notes, while as to the servant 
himself, he declared that nothing would 
atone for the injury he had suffered. 

However, a plaster for the servant's 
wounded feelings was found in the shape of 
a hundred-rouble note ; after which nothing 
remained but to plaster the examining mag- 
istrate, the inspector of police (whose plaster- 
ing in the first instance would have saved 
all this trouble), and the prison governor, 
who else might have made a hubbub. This 
done, Herr Dicker was released from gaol 
after a confinement of three days. But sad it 
is to say that he behaved wrong-headedly as 
soon as he got home ; for, thinking that his 
liberation was due to his own blamelessness, 
he flew into the worst of rages with Frau 
Dicker for having behaved as if he had been 
guilty. The wives of innocent men have often 
much to put up with. 

One of the results of this little adventure 
was that Heir Dicker looked very sharply at 
his bank-notes in future. He nearly got into 
trouble a second time for refusing a true note 
which he alleged to be false. Then he had 
a disturbance with his wife's friend, the 
forage colonel, for paying him a false note 
which was traced up to the military pay- 
master, who had got it from the Bank, whose 
manager took a long time to convince him- 
self that it was sham, and only exchanged 
it for a good one after much grumbling. It 
befell at this juncture that the Holy War 
against the Turks was declared, when an Im- 
perial decree ordered all Russians to carry 
their bank-notes to the offices of the tax-re- 
ceivers, who, by stamping them, took 5 per 
cent, off their value. The effect of this in- 
genious war-tax was to increase the circula- 
tion of false notes prodigiously, so that 
people soon ceased to trouble themselves 
whether they held good paper or bad. 

But Herr Dicker troubled himself, because 
he owed a grudge to the Archimandrite's ser- 
vant and wished to catch that worthy trip- 
ping. He had a keen eye for flash paper, 
and mentioned to some' friends whom he 
knew to have dealings with the servant that 
if they could catch that person uttering a 
false note they should be rewarded for their 
trouble. This reached the servant's ears and 
made him uncomfortable, for he did not 
wish to put his good master to the expense 
of bribing him out of the scrape ; so he prayed 
the Archimandrite to be careful about the 



notes he received, and that pious man be- 
came, in truth, so careful that all who came 
into contact with him caught the contagion. 

Three or four suspicious men in a town 
can play havoc with a paper currency ; and, 
owing to Herr Dicker's grudge, business re- 
lations grew extremely difficult in K . 

The Civil Governor, noting the general dis- 
affection resulting from this and tracing the 
evil to its source decided that if Herr Dicker 
could be put back into prison and kept there 
for a season the public weal would be en- 
hanced. 

It is not difficult to get an hotel-keeper 
into trouble. Herr Dicker was arrested for 
neglecting to make a passing stranger, who 
slept a night in his house, exhibit his pass- 
port, whereby, said the police, a person pre- 
sumed to be a dangerous conspirator had gone 
off, leaving no clue. Herr Dicker once un- 
der lock and key, the Archimandrite's servant 
ceased to vex himself about his bank-notes ; 
so did the Archimandrite, the forage colonel, 
and many others ; whence in an incredibly 
short space of time the flow of false notes and 
of mutual confidence was resumed, to the 
general satisfaction in the town of K . 

As for Frau Dicker, remembering how her 
husband had treated her, she avoided incur- 
ring his reproach by bribing him out a second 
time, and managed the hotel by herself — not 
uncheerfully. Herr Dicker was released after 
three months, lean as a herring and sadly 
rheumatic. And he was an altered man in 
mind as well as body. The first time that a 
flash note was brought him he respectfully 
gave change for it in other flash notes, doing 
in Russia as the Russians do ; and he took 
an early opportunity of resuming convivial 
relations with the Archimandrite's servant. 
Thus the chastening of experience works for 
the good of us all. 

CHAPTER XI. 

THE WHITE CLERGY. 

The ' white ' clergy in Russia are the ordi- 
nary popes and deacons who hold cure of 
souls : the ' black ' clergy are the monks, 
from whose ranks all the Church dignitaries 
are chosen. 

Black and white detest one another with a 
cordiality not often seen in less pious coun- 
tries. A man cannot become a white clergy- 
man unless he is married ; he cannot retain 
his benefice after his wife's death, and he 
must not marry a second time ; so upon be- 
coming a widower he relapses into civil life 
or turns monk. But as a monk he cannot 
aspire to dignities, for his marriage disquali- 
fies him from becoming a bishop ; he must 
possess his soul in patience, and see all the 
mitres given away to monks who have been 
single all their days. 

Until recently a man was compelled to en- 
ter the Church, either as pope or monk, sim- 
ply from the fact that he was a clergyman's 
son ; nowadays, the bishop may release a 
young man from this obligation, but they are 
not bound to do so whenever applied to. 
They refuse if their dioceses be ill stocked 
with clergy ; and at best they will only allow 
a clergyman's son to enter the civil or mili- 
tary service of the Crown ; they will not per- 
mit him to become a tradesman. 

A layman's son finds it easy to become a 
monk, for candidates to the black clergy are 
rare ; but if he wants to turn pope he must 
' prove his vocation ' by paying a fair sum 
of money and furnishing numerous certifi- 
cates of his own and his parents' morality ; 
but even then he will only be admitted if the 
diocese which he seeks to enter stands in 
need of recruits. 

The white clergy form a close caste, and 
it has been the policy of the synods to main- 
tain this state of things by strict laws as to 
clerical marriages. A candidate for orders 
must marry the widow, daughter, or sister of 
a pope, and his bishop often compels him to 
choose his bride within the diocese. A 
clergyman's widow or daughter who would 



like to marry a layman has to deny herself 
that pleasure unless her lover is prepared to 
pay a thousand roubles or so privately to the 
bishop to purchase her ; on the other hand, 
clerical families find an inducement to adhere 
to their order from the fact that benefices are 
hereditary. A son succeeds to his father 
almost as a matter of course ; and if a pope 
leaves only daughters, his benefice will be 
kept open f or a reasonable time, till the eldest 
marries and brings it to her husband as a 
dower. 

Popes have to pay lighting and paving 
rates (in places where there are lights and 
pavements), but they are exempted from all 
Government taxes, from military recruit- 
ment, and billeting. In cases of offence 
against the common law they cannot be sen- 
tenced to corporal punishment, nor in prison 
are their heads shaved ; and all these privi- 
leges and immunities extend to their wives 
and to the children born to them after ordi- 
nation. However, a pope who commits 
some very disgraceful offence, or who incurs 
the wrath of Government — which comes to 
the same thing — can be unfrocked and drafted 
into the army, or be transported to Siberia, 
without any tedious formalities. 

The white clergy accuse the black of di- 
verting from them the benefactions of the 
faithful, and of misappropriating the Church 
revenues generally ; the black reply that the 
white are a set of dissolute fellows who have 
more than enough money r as it is, and grow 
fat by roguery. The people, viewing with 
an equal eye the merits of the two clergies, 
think there is little to choose between them 
in the matter of peculation ; but they de- 
spise the white clergy most because the 
malpractices of the popes are more palpable. 
The budget of the secular clergy amounts 
to £5,000,000, which, distributed among 
36,000 parishes, gives about £140 to each. By 
rights there should be in each parish a pope, 
a deacon, and two clerks, but there are only 
12,000 deacons and 00,000 clerks in the whole 
empire ; consequently, as half the income of 
each parish should go to the pope, every 
pope ought to receive about £85 a year. 
He gets nothing like that, for the bishops act 
as if the establishment of deacons and clerks 
was complete, and put the surplus salaries 
into their pockets. The sj-nods also rob him, 
and at times (for instance, during the war) 
neglect to pay him at all. 

The pope therefore swindles for a living. 
But one need not pity him overmuch, for the 
sums which he makes by his extortions more 
than counterbalance the salary of which he 
is defrauded. In the towns the popes live 
high ; in the villages their homes are always 
comfortable. As we mentioned in a former 
chapter, the popes are generally agents for 
the sale of vodki ; and in addition to this 
they make money by the Easter gifts of the 
rich, by subscriptions raised among the poor 
to buy church images (from which they 
always deduct a good percentage), by requir- 
ing fees for baptisms, burials, weddings, etc., 
by signing eucharistical certificates and cer- 
tificates of character, by intimidating and 
ransoming dissenters, and by wringing death- 
bed donations out of the sick, which they 
often do with impious menaces. 

A Russian priest will do nothing for you 
without payment, and there are few things 
he will not do if well paid. He will accept 
a kopeck sooner than nothing, but he takes 
csre to get a rouble out of you if he thinks you 
can afford it. The loathing felt for the white 
clergy by rich as well as poor would drive 
millions of Russians into overt Nihilism, if it 
were not for the fearful penalties to which 
persons are liable when they desert the 
Orthodox faith in which they have been 
bred. 

A Russian who is born a Jew, Catholic, 
or Raskolnik (dissenter) may live in his heresy, j 
subject to certain restrictions in the exercise 
of his religion and to numerous civil and i 
social disabilities. But a man born in the 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



13 



Orthodox faith may be transported to Siberia 
if he publicly abjures it. And transported 
he will be, unless he compounds with the 
parish priest according to his means. Dis- 
sent is therefore a source of revenue to the 
established clergy, and they wink at it to 
such an extent That there are more than two 
hundred heretical sects flourishing among 
the nominally Orthodox Russians. The 
Church of the Holy Empire is, in fact, can- 
kered and honeycombed with infidelity. 
Every form of craziness, grotesqueness, san- 
guinary wildness and obscenity is embraced 
in the tenets of the heretical sects ; and all 
the members of them who want to be left 
alone pay blackmail. They cannot avoid 
doing so, for the law obliges every Orthodox 
Russian to provide himself with an eucharis- 
tical certificate, setting forth that he has duly 
shriven himself and partaken of the Com- 
munion at Easter. 

On these cucharistical certificates, which 
can always be bought for a fee, is based the 
pompous report which the Procurator of the 
State Synod addresses yearly to the Czar on 
the subject of religion in the empire. This 
functionary makes no allusion to dissent, and 
he gravely writes of the clergy that they ' set 
a -hiuing example of all the Christian virtues. ' 
Nevertheless he lets slip some admissions 
which read oddly. Thus, according to the 
last report published, it is in the army that 
religious duties are most zealously performed 
— this military zeal being a matter of com- 
pulsion. Next in order of piety come the 
peasants, then the Civil Servants of the 
Crown, then the publicans, and lastly, polite 
society. The commercial classes are no- 
where ; and there are 25 per cent, of the sup- 
posed Orthodox Russians who do not show 
up cucharistical certificates at all. 

How comes there to be such an immense 
number of persons who defy the law ? The 
thing would be inexplicable but for the cor- 1 
ruptness of the priests in making capital out [ 
of dissent, and for a peculiar fanatical twist J 
in Russian character which will impel a man 
who has bought an cucharistical certificate 
out of prudence to tear it up, stamp and spit 
upon it afterwards, to vent his spite against 
the priest who sold it to him. Or, again, a 
heretic will bribe a priest to let him alone, 
but will decline to take out a certificate lest it 
should defile him ; in either case the pope 
shrugs his shoulders and has no interest in 
proceeding against the man, nor will anybody 
else proceed against him if the pope does 
not. 

One can understand after this how it comes 
that in popular songs the pope, his wife, and 
clerk should appear as butts for the most sav- 
age satire ; but the peasants who laugh loud- 
est against the priest will be foremost in pros- 
trating themselves inside the churches. The 
Russians sever the Church and the clergy . 
altogether, and the foulest dissenting sects go 
to the places of worship. As for the popes, 
loose ri-h as they are, they are not sceptics. 
They believe in the bodily presence of the 
Evil One, so much so that they are afraid of 
meeting him after dark. They howl during 
thunderstorms ; they bang their heads against 
the altar steps when they have dipped in 
some unusual piece of roguery ; and they 
have a queer theology of their own by which 
they hope to be saved if they stick faithfully 
to rubrics. 

A Russian priest will seriously tell you that 
it is allowable to get drunk but not to smoke, 
lx-<";tu-<- ' not that which goeth in hut that 
whieli cometh out of the mouth defileth a 
man ;' and he will argue that the saying ' a 
priest must live by the altar ' means that he 
should make the altar yield all it can — that it 
is a talent confided to him, and that he would 
be a slothful servant if he hid it in a napkin. 
But it is in devising salves for the con- 
sciences of rich penitents that the Russian 
' lercry shine most. One of them, desirous of 
-oothing a wealthy barilla, informed her that 
it is not good to be faultless ; for perfect vir- 



tue is apt to beget pride, which is a deadly 
sin, and consequently quite as grievous a mat- 
ter as the particular sin of which the lady in 
quest ion had accused herself . The author of 
this comforting axiom in morals was, how- 
ever, not a humble pope, but a bishop ; as 
doubtless he deserved to be. 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE DAIMOXIKS OF EKATERINOSLAV. 

One of the prettiest towns of Southern Rus- 
sia is Ekaterinoslav, founded by Catherine 
II. under circumstances strongly suggestive 
of the manner in which things were done in 
the Empire a hundred years ago, as now. 

Potemkin, having conquered the vast dis- 
trict at present called New Russia, prevailed 
upon the Empress, whose favorite he was, 
to come and visit it in state ; but there was 
nothing for her Majesty to sec beyond 
steppes covered with vultures and avrotchkis 
(corn-eating rats), so the general gallantly 
extemporized a series of sham villages all 
along the Imperial route. Wherever the 
Empress stopped she was regaled with the 
sight of brightly painted cottages and peas- 
antry in holiday attire, who yelled hymns in 
her honor. Delighted with all she saw, the 
kind-hearted Empress instituted serfdom 
among her new subjects, and, coming to a 
picturesque spot on the Dnieper, with hills, 
birch trees, and so forth, decided she would 
there found a city which should be the St. 
Petersburg of the south. 

This programme has not yet been fulfilled ; 
but there is no guessing the possibilities of a 
town which stands in the middle of an im- 
mense tract of coal-mines, and whose river 
may become navigable some day when Rus- 
sians may go to work without having the 
Tschinn to reckon with. Meantime Ekater- 
inoslav has a showy boulevard, a mineralogi- 
cal museum (formerly the palace of Potem- 
kin, who was presented by his mistress with 
a million acres of land in the neighborhood), 
a French hotel with beds, which are unusual 
luxuries in Russian hostelries, and a number 
of half-built palaces, in which the nobility 
of the district come to lodge at the triennial 
assemblies of nobles. 

The inhabitants of Ekaterinoslav not being 
much occupied in overreaching one another 
in commerce, and the Civil servants findin 
time hang heavy on their hands, there is a 
great deal of leisure for the cultivation of 
small talk and metaphysics ; and, in fact, 
the town plumes itself on being one of the 
centres of Russian thought. The ladies 
dress in the Parisian fashions of the year be- 
fore last and babble a sort of French derived 
from the novels of M. Paul do Kock. Many 
of the shops affect French sign-boards, and 
the place seems to have attractions for Gascon 
barbers and cooks, who having failed in busi 
ness on the banks of the Garonne, come here 
to quarrel with square-headed Germans who 
sell musical instruments and teach arithmetic 
in the schools. 

In Ekaterinoslav, as elsewhere, the 
' thought ' of society is disloyal ; for when 
ever Russians fall to thinking they think ill 
of their rulers. Ladies who receive you to 
tea chatter about constitutionalism, the im 
morality of the priesthood, and the latest 
fads in political economy, as if these refresh 
ing topics were the best things to promote 
conviviality. Men are equally babhlesome 
with the frondeur spirit, and, provided neither 
the civil nor military governor be present to 
act as wet blanket, will talk of an impending 
revolution as of a coming family dance in 
which all good Russians will be delighted to 
join. For a long time strangers mistook 
these signs for the mere magpie garrulous 
ness of people who were bored and wanted 
to show off before foreigners as intellectual 
beings ; but the prestige of the Romanoff 
dynasty i-. chiefly based on the supposition 
of the Czar's invincible military might, and 
would not bear the stress of defeat. For 
the sake of invincibility — for the sake of 



maintaining that mammoth army of four 
million men, on paper, which is believed to 
make Europe tremble — the Russian would 
put up with a great deal ; but, let the Czar 
be once well beaten, his flag disgraced and 
Russian credit destroyed, then it would be 
seen that the national discontent is no super- 
ficial thing. 

In Ekaterinoslav there are several hundred 
Raskolniks, who walk about with the flow- 
ing beards and long robes of the Old Rus- 
sians, and protest against the depravity of 
their contemporaries by a style of living 
austerely Puritan ; there arc Nihilists, and 
Steouriks, and Bejemschiks, whose gods are 
Voltaire, Stenko-Razin, and Pougatcheff 
(the revolutionary Socialists) ; there are Dai- 
moniks, whose worship resembles adoration 
of the Evil One ; there are Mirskites, or mem- 
bers of country mirs, who, being allowed to 
work as servants or workmen in the towns, 
have to pay their communes more than half 
their earnings and grumble at this obligation 
with a ferocious sullenness ; and there is an 
official journal, which comes out twice a 
week, printed on grey candle-paper, and 
takes no more heed of these excited sects and 
factions than if they were cutting their 
capers in China. 

Latterly, however, the candle-paper jour- 
nal did have to notice the strange goings-on 
of a Countess Olga Nervski, who, at a time 
when the authorities had their hands full with 
raising recruits for the war, suddenly threw 
the town into convulsions by espousing the 
tenets of the Daimoniks just mentioned. 
One Sunday the Countess, who is a widow, 
began shrieking in church at the top of her 
contralto voice. The pope stopped in the 
middle of his prayers ; the sacristans bustled 
forward to her assistance ; but it was soon 
seen that the Countess was not laboring under 
a mere fit of hysterics, but intended to go on 
shrieking until others joined her. The 
church was soon filled with howling, for a 
Russian has only to give tongue for another 
to chime in without caring why ; and so the 
congregation broke up in disorder. Then 
the Countess, tearing off her French bonnet 
and letting her hair flow down her back, 
rushed out of church, followed by a sympa- 
thetic crowd, among whom the driver of her 
droschki tried to plough his way, thwacking 
his horses and shedding tears of excitement. 

It was soon known that Olga Marienvna, 
as her intimates called her, had been ' illumi- 
nated ;' but with what sort of a light only 
appeared in the evening when, amidst a circle 
of guests who were drinking punch d la 
Grcmot and tea flavored with lemon-juice, she 
announced that she would die in the faith of 
the Daimoniks. The faith in question pro- 
ceeds from the assumption that as the Evil 
One has the largest share in the government 
of this world, and of Russia in particular, 
insomuch that there is no avoiding his de- 
crees, the best way to act is to try and make 
friends with him by throwing aside all moral 
restraints whatsoever. The Daimoniks trust 
that Diabolos, being touched, will refuse to 
admit into any place of torment the soul that 
served him so well. Nay, that the very 
weakness which induced the soul to rely on 
Diabolos may be accepted as a plea for mercy 
in the courts above ; or that in any case the 
soul, being refused above and below, will 
float about in space enjoying eternal sleep. 

If the Countess Olga had lived in the Em- 
peror Nicholas's time she would not have 
joined these Daimoniks, for the civil governor 
would have had her taken to the police-office 
and privately whipped ; but the present Czar 
has never understood his father's policy of 
treating Russians like school-boys and school- 
girls, though, on the other hand, he has failed 
to see that in raising his subjects to the dig- 
nity of grown-up persons he should have 
given them employment fit for adults. 

The natural result of the half-and-half pol- 
icy has been that educated Russians like the 
Countess and her friends — finding no scope 



14 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



for their independent energies, and being 
nevertheless continually inflamed by the lib- 
eral literature of the West, which comes 
pouring over the frontier like so much lava — 
are liable to grow crazy. After expounding 
her faith hysterically for a couple of days in 
her own home, to the conversion of her at- 
tached domestics and dinner-table hangers-on, 
the Countess one morning vanished into the 
country and began to scatter the doctrines 
of her new faith among the peasantry. 

It is not rare in Russia to meet with hallu- 
cinated ladies devoting themselves to mis- 
sions of this sort ; and had there been no war 
going on the Countess Olga might have been 
left to compound her heresy by payments to 
the clergy, and afterwards go her ways until 
her demoniacal fever spent itself, which 
would doubtless have been soon. 

But in times when the popular nerves are 
strained to the tightest tension-point religious 
outbreaks may become the rallying-points for 
political disturbances ; wherefore the author- 
ities of Ekaterinoslav grew uneasy. For 
some time past the humor of the townsfolk 
had been sulky and obstreperous, for this was 
at the outset of the campaign while the Turks 
were getting the best of it. The little candle- 
paper journal, after telling untruths about 
the war with surprising effrontery, had been 
at last compelled to own that things were 
not going on as they ought ; private letters 
from the Danube told the same story ; and 
in fact the propagation by a rich and comely 
widow of a heresy which flaunted defiance at 
everything and everybody was just likely to 
commend itself to the mood of a population 
sick to death of showing respect to their bet- 
ters. 

So a batch of policemen were sent in quest 
of the Countess Olga, and she was brought 
back ; but the Civil Governor, being a gentle- 
man and coated over with a French polish of 
scepticism and urbanity, thought it better to 
reason laughingly with the lady than to pun- 
ish her ; and this device succeeded. Olga Mar- 
ienvna ended by laughing too, and went back 
to her house saying that her illumination (in 
which, mayhap, she had seen a vision of 
Siberian snows) had passed away. But it 
did not pass away from the minds of others, 
whose brains she had set on tire, and it must 
have caused Olga Marienvna a thrill of hor- 
ror to hear that the police and the military 
were going about apprehending all the low- 
class Daimoniks, with a number of Nihilists 
and Bejemschiks into the bargain, and en- 
rolling them by force into the army. 

This is the usual upshot of such affairs. 
The Russian army must have soldiers ; and, 
as the peasantry hide away like field mice 
from the search of the recruiting officers in 
times of disaster, a conspiracy or a riot comes 
as a welcome pretext for impressment. The 
Daimonik business saved the Governor of 
Ekaterinoslav the trouble of resorting to the 
expedient adopted by his colleague at Nov- 
gorod, who pounced upon all the able-bodied 
buyers and sellers who had come to the an- 
nual fair. It also purged his town for a 
while of discontented spirits, and gave the 
little candle-paper journal an opportunity of 
writing that the pressed men had all enlisted 
voluntarily, and ' had, indeed, gone away 
anxious to atone for a passing aberration by 
loyal service to their country thenceforth. ' 
That is the way they manage official journal- 
ism in Holy Russia. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

A BOOKSELLER AND PUBLISHER. 

Over the front of a shop painted bright 
yellow in the Czarina Prospect of Ekaterino- 
slav are these words in Russo-French : 
' Triknieff— Libraire et Publieur. ' Triknieff 
has been told a hundred times that the French 
for publisher is editcur ; but a Russian takes 
tender liberties with the languages he loves 
— as witness that barber lower down the 
street, who, to cut out a French rival over 



the way, goes in for Anglicism with the an- 
nouncement : ' Ruzski ; Inglish Shaver. ' 

Triknieff, though, is not an ignorant man, 
for he holds a mart for the works of human 
intellect published all the world over. His 
shop is full of French, English, and German 
books. He publishes works in the Russian 
tongue, he owns a monthly magazine, and 
would have started a weekly newspaper be- 
fore now if the town where he flourishes had 
possessed that inestimable boon, a censor. 
Scores of Russian towns are crying out for 
censors, but there are only nine censorial 
commissions in the whole empire, and every 
book or magazine essay which Triknieff 
wishes to put forth must be sent to Odessa 
for approval: 

Three months is the shortest time that can 
elapse before he gets back his manuscript, 
more or less embellished with corrections in 
red pencil ; but sometimes six months slip 
by, for the censors have a great deal to do. 
If a work contains strictures upon anything 
connected with Government service it must 
be referred to the State department in St. 
Petersburg which those strictures concern ; 
and this often involves a delay of years. 
For these reasons Triknieff has to get his 
magazine made up months beforehand ; but 
even then he is not sure of being able to 
sell it ; for an essay which was innocuous at 
the time when it received the imprimatur 
may, through a turn in circumstances, be- 
come perilous reading, in which case the 
magazine is seized. Last year Triknieff re- 
ceived a well-written work upon the diffi- 
culties of a campaign on the Danube ; but as 
these difficulties regarded the War Office, the 
book was forwarded thither, and there it is 
lying now. Perhaps Triknieff will be allowed 
to publish it, with amendments, towards the 
beginning of 1879, if he should think the 
subject still retains interest then. 

Triknieff would be a happy man if Gov- 
ernment would instal a censor in his town 
and arm him with full powers ; but he 
and Government look at this question from 
opposite points of view ; for Triknieff wants 
to promote the sale of literature and Govern- 
ment desires to check it. It is more than 
enough for the authorities that publica- 
tions should come out with tolerable fre- 
quency in the nine university towns — St. 
Petersburg, Moscow, Kazan, Dorpat, Vilua 
(Lithuania), Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, and 
Warsaw. All these places possess censors, 
and most of them one or two daily inde- 
pendent newspapers, whose articles have to 
be submitted for revision three clear days be- 
fore going to print ; but, if country-town 
censors were appointed, Triknieff and "his fel- 
lows would soon get bribing them, and there 
would be no damming up the torrent of 
prints that would well up, to the flooding of 
institutions that could no longer stand if the 
waters of publicity were let into them. 

These things have been benevolently ex- 
plained to Triknieff by the civil governor more 
than once, and the shrewd old gentleman 
has advised the publisher to be content with 
such wit as he has for cheating the censor- 
ship as often as he can. Triknieff under- 
stands what this means, for he is only tram- 
melled by the censors so far as outward ap- 
pearances go. What these gentlemen virtu- 
ally do is to hinder his publication of works 
by respectable native writers and to mutilate 
foreign works forwarded to him by his agent 
at Leipzic ; but in the matter of issuing 
anonymous Socialist pamphlets, or boudoir 
romances such as could not be suffered to lie 
on any decent boudoir table, Triknieff, like 
the rest of his craft in Russia, is free. 

He has a clandestine press and numerous 
secret hawkers who help him to disseminate 
tons of foolish and foul literature, with the 
tacit connivance of the police, whom he sub- 
orns. If you asked him for Mill's ' Political 
Economy ' over his counter, he would tell 
3 r ou that the work is forbidden ; if you 
wanted to buy Thackeray's ' Virginians ' you 



would find about five dozen pages cut out. 
The works of Voltaire, Thiers, Macaulay, 
and Victor Hugo are not to be seen on Trik- 
nieff's shelves ; those of Dickens, Balzac, 
and the elder Dumas are only purchasable 
(publicly) in an incomplete form ; but, if the 
honest bookseller has to deal with a man of 
position or with a lady whom he can trust, 
he will come after dark, bringing a cargo not 
only of the works asked for, but of numerous 
others of which it would not be expedient so 
much as to utter the names aloud. 

The Russians are great readers, and the 
difficulty of procuring good foreign works in 
open day makes every one privy, more or 
less, to the malpractices of booksellers. Long 
before the censors have made up their minds 
as to M. Victor Hugo's last production, ' The 
History of a Crime,' the work will have been 
read by every Russian who cares to pay the 
high price for which smuggled or pirated 
copies can be bought. But extravagant 
prices are naturally a bar to persons of mode- 
rate means ; and that is how it comes that 
the pomeschiks, or small squires, the trading 
classes, university students, and subaltern 
officers have exhausted the frivolous in liter- 
ature ; and when they have exhausted the 
frivolous then hawkers tempt their jaded ap- 
petites, as above said, with licentious books 
under alluring titles. 

Much of the corruption of women in Rus- 
sian society — corruption which often finds 
vent in hysteric outbreaks towards Nihilism, 
Daimonism, or what not — comes of the fear- 
ful books that are devoured for want of bet- 
ter mental food. The Russian bookseller is, 
in fact, a wholesale polluter of morals; and 
yet such a one as Triknieff, in the Czarina 
Prospect, only trades in vice because he 
would have to shut up shop if he confined 
himself to the lawful sale of books allowed 
by the censors. Give him freedom of book- 
selling, and he would be the tirst to suppress 
the clandestine branch of his trade, being a 
respectable man often to be seen in church 
along with his wife — who, it is to be hoped, 
knows nothing of the strange works piled 
up in his cellars. 

Triknieff 's expenses are high, for he keeps 
three fonts of type — Russian, German, and 
French — and has a staff of compositors who 
can print in three languages. Skilled labor 
is always dear in Russia, and the artels of 
printers have latterly forced up the wages 
of their hands to three paper roubles a clay. 
It needs a sale of many books to cover such 
prices ; but when it is considered that Trik- 
nieff keeps about half a dozen police officials 
in hush-money, and has to pay two or three 
yearly visits to Odessa to propitiate censors 
and get whole boxes of foreign books through 
the custom-house uninspected, the only won- 
der is that, he can make the two ends meet 
at all. His shop is almost always empty, 
and he gives away so man}' gratis copies of 
his uninteresting magazine that its selling 
circulation can hardly meet the cost of print- 
ing. 

Probably he keeps up this periodical for 
the respectability it gives him. He is an hon- 
orary member of several provincial acade- 
mies; an inspector of schools (which confers 
on him the right to a bright blue uniform 
and a star with three points) ; he sits in the 
municipal council of his town and on the 
jury at assizes ; and he is generally regarded 
as a first-class savant. His magazine treats 
of science and agriculture ; publishes adapta- 
tions of French and English sensation nov- 
els ; and is of course profoundly and gush- 
ingly loyal. The contributors are generally 
amateurs in the service of the Crown who 
like to see themselves in print ; but there is a 
sub-editor, a polyglot Pole, who pads the 
pages with translations from foreign periodi- 
cals when original matter fails. 

Triknieff is great at piracies, and when a 
foreign novel is passed by the censors and 
seems likely to have a good sale, he will re- 
print it sooner than go to the expense of or- 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



15 



dering copies from abroad. Some of these 
reprints read oddly, for, with a view to econ- 
omy, all that is not ' action ' in the book — dis- 
quisitions, descriptions of scenery, etc. — are 
expunged. The polyglot Pole has a marked 
talent ~for compressing three volumes into 
one, and will often give a work the touch 
of literary finish, either by an addition of sen- 
sationalism or by a readjustment of ' scenes,' 
which in his opinion it lacks. More often, 
however, the works which Triknieff pirates 
are those which the censors have banned: and 
then the Pole is useful for dressing up these 
books in Russian garb, denationalizing the 
characters and their names. 

Triknieff prints more things in Russian 
than in French or German : though works in 
these last two languages always command a 
sale among those who aspire at gentility 
His magazine is Russian, and as such is 
viewed with favor by the authorities, who 
like to be able to show* by palpable proof how 
the Czar's Government encourages native 
literature. It is probable, indeed, that if 
from some cause or other Triknieff was com- 
pelled to abandon the publication of his peri- 
odical, somebody else would be assisted to 
bring it out, so that it might not be said that 
gravely instructive literature had ceased to 
be in demand in any of his Majesty's prov- 
inces. As it is, the magazine undoubtedly 
does Triknieff a good turn by giving him the 
decent name which he could hardly derive 
from his other literary transactions. It is 
like the reputable flag which a pirate hoists 
whej he sails with a cargo of contraband. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

NEWSPAPERS AND REVIEWS. 

It would be unfair to class all Russian re- 
views along with the magazine published by 
Triknieff, of Ekaterinoslav. St. Petersburg 
and Moscow have some excellent reviews, a 
few well-written daily papers, and hidf-a- 
dozen comic journals that are really funny 
and very licentious. Among these last the 
Sciatok (' Whistle ') and the Iskra (" Spark ') 
deserve an honorable mention, both for their 
letterpress and caricatures. Their artists are 
trained in the French school, but go further 
than Parisian cartoonists would dare to do. 
They valiantly attack all but the strong — the 
smaller tyrants of the bureaucracy, private 
persons, monks, lathes, foreigners ; and no- 
body has any remedy against them, for they 
are protected by powerful persons whom 
these attacks amuse. 

Some years ago a facetiously abominable 
little print, called the Veseltchak {' Wag '), 
was suppressed for a series of bitter lampoons 
on the private life of a foreign Sovereign : 
but it was no secret that these attacks had 
been inspired by a high official not uncon- 
nected with the Ministry of Police : and the 
editor forthwith reissued his paper under a. 
new name, the Goudok, thereby proving that 
he had sufficient interest in official quarters, 
for otherwise he could not have obtained the 
necessary license. A Russian newspaper pro- 
prietor must first obtain permission to print, 
then lodge 2,500 silver roubles as caution 
money ; after which he becomes subject to a 
regime of ' admonitions,' two of which en- 
tail a suspension for a term of two months. 
Those who cannot afford to lodge caution 
money — which they are not likely ever to see 
again, for it is forfeited in case the paper is 
suppressed — have to submit to a preventive 
censorship by sending their articles to the 
censors three clear days beforehand. 

In provincial towns where there are no 
censors, anil where a man does not care to 
throw away 'J 100, journalism is non-existent ; 
but even in the two capitals, and in such 
large cities as Kiev and Odessa, a proprietor 
who has paid caution money finds it prudent 
to let the censors have a peep at the articles 
he is going to print — or, at least, he submits 
them to one or other of the great people 
whom every Russian newspaper has behind 
it. Independent journalism, as understood 



in other countries, does not exist in Russia. 
If a man were guilelessly to suppose that be- 
cause he had fulfilled the legal formalities he 
could carry on a newspaper without official 
support, it would not take him a week to 
discover his mistake, for all the profits of 
; his circulation would be swallowed up in 
compounding with tschinovniks, who would 
threaten him with admonitions and lawsuits. 

There at this moment 475 daily, weekly, 
or bi-weekly journals in Russia, 377 of them 
\ being published in the native tongue. Of 
this total 06 papers are the property of uni- 
' versifies and colleges. 101 belong to trade 
J guilds or professional artels, 101 are official 
I journals published under the direction of 
provincial governors, and the remainder are 
all in the hands of influential magnates, who 
employ them more to gratify private malice 
or ambition than to serve public ends. 

The most eminent of so-called independent 
papers in the capital, the Golos (' Voice '), is 
the organ of the Czar's intimate friends, the 
Bariatinskis. and the liberalism it affects has 
' its source at Court. The Journal de St. P&ers- 
i bouvg. edited by a Belgian, and published in 
French, is the pet paper of Chancellor Gort- 
i schakoff and his friends. The Tnvalide is 
supported by the War Office and is the 
' mouthpiece of the old Russian Chauviu 
party, while its rival, the Russian World. 
edited by General Fadeicff, a clever man, ad- 
j vocates military reforms under the avgis of 
J, the Czarewitch. The -SZ. Petersburg Jfews, 
also called the Academical Gazette, was re- 
cently purchased of the Academy by the 
Ministry of Public Instruction, and has no 
definite policy, but goes in for personalities 
against all who make themselves disagree- 
able to official authors, artists, doctors, and 
j the ladies of the Imperial operas. It was 
'. this journal that clamored for the recall of 
the Russian female students at Zurich, and 
! egged on the prosecution whic h has resulted 
in the transportation of several of these poor 
girls to Siberia. Among the best known 
provincial papers the Odessa Messenger, 
whose literary articles are remarkable, be- 
longs to the Lycec Richelieu : the Kiedanine 
of Kiev is the property of monks : finally, 
there is the Moscow Gazette, edited by M. Kat- 
koff, which for brilliancy and fearless hard- 
hitting excels the other papers in the Em- 
pire. 

This journal belongs to the University of 
Moscow, but M. Katkoff has lately hired it 
on lease for twelve years in consideration of 
a yearly payment of 74,000 silver roubles 
(£11,840). this is a great rental, but the 
circulation of the paper exceeds 40.000 cop- 
ies a day, and it has a monopoly of the ad- 
vertisements in Moscow. M. Katkoff is the 
most eminent journalist in Russia, and, be- 
ing a friend of the Czar, as well as the pet of 
the Panslavist party, wields unquestionable 
power, though not so much as he did ten 
years ago. In 180G he had influence enough 
to overthrow M. Valoui'ef. Minister of the 
Interior, who had presumed to suspend his 
journal, and he caused M. Milutiue to be 
set up in his stead. Since then he and M. 
Milutine have grown cool towards each oth- 
er ; for M. KaTkoff is not the man to go in 
leading-strings, and lashes out now and then 
against official abuses in a style which does 
not displease the Czar, but "which cannot 
commend itself to placemen. 

M. Katkoff was originally a fervent advo- 
cate of British Constitutionalism ; the Polish 

| insurrection changed his ideas, and now 
there is not a Russian who hates England 
politically more than he. But he speaks 
English faultlessly ; and his fancy for Brit- 
ish" literature appears to have survived his 
love of other things English, for a review 
which he conducts together with the Moscoio 
Gazette is almost entirely devoted to the re- 
production of English novels and to the criti- 
cism of works published in Loudon. 
This review, the Russian Messenger, is one 

; of four periodicals which occupy a foremost 



place in the literature of the Empire. The 
others are the European Messenger, published 
in St. Petersburg, and dealing chiefly with 
French works ; the Annals of the Country, and 
the Dielo (' Work '). M. Katkoff 's erudite re- 
viewers have a strong conservative bias : the 
essayists in the otner three magazines are 
more or less lively and liberal. Russian soci- 
ety looks forward to the first of each month, 
when these reviews appear, with keen inter- 
est, for under cover of literary criticism the 
essayists deal unsparingly in political and 
social satire. Most of them are men of great 
culture, and carry to a high point of perfec- 
tion that art of innuendo which has always 
to be cultivated under despotic governments. 
However, Government allows a much greater 
latitude to reviewers than to journalists ; 
and much more license to writers in the two 
capitals generally than to those in the prov- 
inces. Many a literary essay is published in 
the Dielo which, if cut up into leaders and 
printed at Kharkov, would send its writer to 
prison. 

The Dielo is very fond of dallying with 
Nihilism, and takes the works of Renan, 
Strauss, and Darwin as texts for veritable 
sermons on infidelity — most delightful for 
Russian ladies to read between two cups of 
tea flavored with rum. Most well-to-do peo- 
ple subscribe to all four of the reviews; and, 
besides finding therein the intellectual feast 
of satire and atheism just mentioned, get a 
monthly supply of serial stories by the most 
popular Russian novelists — Ivan Tourgueni- 
eff. Dostoi'evski, Tolstoi, Salinas, Averkief, 
and others. 

Many English readers are acquainted with 
the romances of Ivan Tourguenieff, the au- 
thor of ' Smoke,' who could hold his own 
against any Western novelist ; but those of 
Tolstoi and Dostoi'evski are little known out- 
side Russia, although they would well deserve 
translation. As much cannot be said as to the 
works of Averkief, Salhias, Avsienko, and 
Markevitch, who are the inaugurators of the 
Russian ' new school,' which calls itself real- 
istic, but is a compound of extravagance and 
sensualism. The gods of this new school are 
evidently MM. Gustavo Flaubert and Emile 
Zola : buc, while striving to imitate the de- 
fects of these Frenchmen, the Russian real- 
ists delight to copy the mannerisms of M. 
Victor Hugo's latter-day method in prose, 
which is hardly suited to the minute por- 
trayal of social turpitudes. Immorality de- 
scribed in pompous language and with far- 
fetched metaphors has a queer effect upon 
the Western reader ; but Russian ladies and 
gentlemen are swearing at present by the 
works of Averkief and Salhias, whom they 
affect to rank above Tourguenieff, and so it 
must be presumed that these gifted writers 
hold up mirrors in which the society of the 
Holy Empire sees itself faithfully reflected. 

CHAPTER XV. 

MARRIAGE CUSTOMS. 

Russian marriages are generally arranged 
through priests. Being matters of business, 
it is desirable that there should be no mistake 
as to the amount of dower which the bride is 
in bring, and there would veiy likely be mis- 
takes if some member of the upper clergy 
were not to act as an intermediary in prepar- 
ing the settlements. An archimandrite does 
much of the work that falls to notaries in 
other countries ; only he charges more, and a 
portion of the dower is apt to stick between 
his fingers. A well-bred bridegroom must 
present a gift to a monastery and another to 
his parish church ; the bride, through her 
friends, is expected to clothe some statue of 
a Virgin with a gown of silver brocade, en- 
riched with more or less jewels according to 
| the piety of the donor ; and in some parts of 
Southern Russia she adds a gift of two white 
doves to the pope, which looks rather like a 
relic of the worship of Venus. The consent 
of parents is necessary for a marriage : until 
the age of thirty in the case of men, twenty- 



16 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



five in that of women ; but young people 
are at liberty to appeal to tlie civil authorities 
if consent be arbitrarily withheld. In this 
event the parents are called upon to show 
reason for their refusal. The reason must 
not be mercenary unless one of the young 
people be heir to a landed estate ; then the 
question is referred to the marshal of the no- 
bility in the district, whose decisions are 
based upon expediency rather than upon 
fixed principles. 

These appeals are rare, because the Rus- 
sians are a marrying people and dispose of 
their children early. In the middle and lower 
classes men marry at twenty when not draft- 
ed by the conscription ; in the higher aristoc- 
racy a young man goes the ' grand tour ' be- 
fore settling down, but he is often betrothed 
before starting to a young lady not yet out of 
the schoolroom, and he weds her immediate- 
ly upon his return. There is no country 
which has so few old maids as Russia. The 
great ridicule attached to the title, when not 
borne by a nun, has possibly something to 
do with the unwillingness of ladies to sport 
it. When a girl has reached the age of 
twenty-five without finding a mate, she gen- 
erally sets out on what she calls a pilgrimage 
if poor — on a round of travels if rich ; and in 
either case she turns up some years after as 
a widow. Widows are as plentiful as old 
spinsters are scarce ; and widows whose hus- 
bands were never seen are more numerous 
than the rest. Etiquette forbids any allusion 
to a lady's dead husband in her presence ; 
and this is, perhaps, sometimes convenient. 

When a couple are engaged, a betrothal 
feast is held, and the bride elect has a lock of 
her hair cut off in the presence of witnesses, 
and given to the bridegroom, who in return 
presents a silver ring set with a turquoise, an 
almond cake, and a gift of bread and salt. 
Erom this moment the two are plighted ; nor 
can the relatives break the match except 
with the consent of the parties themselves, 
which is signified by a return of the ring and 
lock of hair. So much importance is at- 
tached to the ring, at least in the north of 
Russia, that among poor people who cannot 
afford silver and a turquoise, tin and a bit of 
blue stone are substituted. These betrothal 
rings are kept as heirlooms, but must not be 
made to serve twice — a son cannot give his 
bride the ring which his mother received, for 
instance ; though why this should be so is a 
mystery which the clergy, who sell the rings, 
could best explain. 

On the wedding day the bride comes to 
church dressed in white ; but it is only 
among the highest classes, who copy Western 
fashions, that the bridal costume is entirely 
white, and that a wreath of orange-flower 
blossoms is used. Among Russians pure 
light blue is the nuptial color, and a coronet 
of silver ribbon stands in place of the wreath. 
The wedding-ring for the bride is of gold or 
some yellow metal, but not a plain hoop ; it 
is generally a double ring with enchased 
stars. The bi'idegroom has a ring, too, 
which the bride puts on his finger in the 
presence of the pope after she has received 
his, and this is mostly a plain one. The 
clergy make much ado about the rings being 
of pure metal, and thereby keep the sale of 
them in their hands, though it would not al- 
ways be safe to test the purity of the eccle- 
siastical gold with a touchstone. After the 
wedding service, which comprises in some of 
the less civilized districts the breaking of an 
earthenware vessel in 'token that the bride 
renounces her own possession (or is ready to 
smash all her father's crockery for her hus- 
band's sake— explanations differ)— after this 
there is an adjournment to a banquet in 
which mulled kvass (small beer) and almond 
cakes play a great part. 

Weddings need not be celebrated before 
midday, nor must they take place in a 
church. In fashionable circles it is the cus- 
tom to solemnize them in a drawing-room, 
and by candlelight. There is no departure 



on a honeymoon tour. The banquet is fol- 
lowed by a ball, then by a supper ; and at 
this last repast, when held in houses where 
old customs are observed, a new satin slip- 
per, supposed to be the bride's, is produced, 
and used as a drinking vessel by the bride- 
groom's friends, who pass it round and drink 
the bride's health in it till it is soaked 
through and will hold liquor no longer. In 
houses where speeches are made it is not the 
bridegroom, but the bride's father, who re- 
turns thanks when her health is drunk — this 
usage being owing to the fact that a father 
still retains authority over his child after she 
is married. He may summon her from her 
home to tend him when he is sick. If he lose 
his wife he may claim his married daughter's 
services as a housekeeper during the first three 
months of his widowhood : and he very often 
does so. If the daughter's husband die, her 
father may order her to return to his roof, 
and he becomes de jure the guardian of her 
children. None of these privileges is retained 
by a married woman's mother. 

Divorces are not properly allowed in 
Russia, but a marriage can be annulled for in- 
formality ; and so divorces are pretty fre- 
quent. It is only a question of money, like 
most Russian things. In Lithuania and 
some parts of Little Russia it is the custom for 
the bride's nearest relative to give her a slap 
on the face at the moment of leading her to 
the priest, the object of this being to establish, 
in case of need, that the bride married under 
compulsion — which would be enough to break 
the marriage. Russians themselves assure 
strangers that the slap is only a reminder to 
the bride to behave well in future ; but the 
true sense of it is that just stated, for other- 
wise the reminder would presumably be given 
by the bridegroom. 

In soma parts of the Empire the date of 
the marriage is left blank on the certificate ; 
and this again furnishes grounds for a divorce. 
In the Chersonese the pope intentionally 
omits to register the ages of the parties ; but 
there is no real need for any of these precau- 
tions, for the marriage laws are so complex 
that two parties willing to pay for the lux- 
ury of a separation can easily ferret out an 
ukase whose prescriptions were not scrupu- 
lously observed at their nuptials. It is the 
clergy who declare a marriage null, and they 
will connive at any trick for this purpose. It 
is not by any means rare for a lady of fickle 
affections to get her new lover to pay her 
husband a sum of money that he may con- 
sent to a divorce ; and this has been done 
even in social circles where a regard for de- 
cencies might have been expected. About a 
dozen years ago an Imperial decree was 
launched forbidding servants of the Crown 
below the fifth rank to apply for annulments 
of marriage except with the permission of 
their chiefs, which would have been absurd if 
such annulments had only been asked for, as 
a rule, upon sufficient grounds. Annulled 
ladies, whether remarried or not, are received 
into society ; so are those who have annulled 
marriages two or three times ; and, indeed 
Russian morals as to the sanctity of mar- 
riage are nothing if not lax. 

Russians make good husbands, according 
to their own ideas of good — that is, they are 
indulgent, good tempered, and not jealous ; 
but in the higher classes they are incorrigi- 
ble flirts, and in the lower they drink, and, 
being drunk, settle all connubial differences 
hy blows. It is a common sight in a village 
to see a mujick cuffing his wife with might 
and main ; nor do her howls bring any of 
her own sex to her assistance. It seems to 
be admitted among all but the upper classes 
that a man has full right to beat his wife, and 
she gets no sympathy whether she vociferates 
or hits back. In case of flagrant infidelity a 
Russian may have his wife put in prison for 
a year, and if she be not of noble blood or of 
a priest's family, he may have her once 
flogged besides ; but this prerogative is more 
honored in the breach than in the observance. 



Women have no counter-hold over their hus- 
bands, and herein appears the Oriental view 
still prevailing in the Empire as to the as- 
cendency of the strong sex. A husband 
may appear as a witness in a lawsuit against 
his wife, but a wife is not heard against her 
husband ; a man may oblige his wife to work 
for him, but a wife cannot sue her husband 
even for necessaries, and she has no redress 
against him if he deserts her. 

Orientalism appears again in the almost 
total seclusion of Russian middle-rank wo- 
men within their own homes. You must 
have known a Russian of the trading class 
for some time before he thinks it advisable to 
introduce his wife ; and you must have been 
his intimate friend for years before he would 
take the liberty of letting her sit down to table 
in your presence. Russian women go out of 
doors with their children, but seldom with 
their husbands ; and a man is not expected 
to take notice of another man's wife by bow- 
ing to her if she passes him in the streets. 
One of the sights which surprises a Russian 
of the midland cities most when he goes to 
St. Petersburg, Moscow, or Odessa is to no- 
tice the promiscuous flow of both sexes in 
the streets and in places of amusement. As 
to the spectacle of married ladies sitting in 
the boxes of theatres with their shoulders 
bare, this amazing license is enough to take 
his breath away. 

In writing of marriage customs one must 
not forget the marriage fairs, which are still 
held in some provincial towns during Easter 
week. It was formerly the practice, even in 
Moscow and St. Petersburg, for all the mar- 
riageable men and maidens to resort to the 
public gardens on Easter Sunday, and return 
there every day of the week. Rich men 
could take their pick. When a pretty face 
pleased them they addressed its owner direct- 
ly, and asked the names of her parents. If 
open to an offer she gave the required infor- 
mation, and negotiations were commenced 
without delay. Country people used to 
travel from afar to attend these marriage 
fairs, which were not unlike the statute hir- 
ings in English markets, only that the dam- 
sels were hired for life ; but nowadays girls 
of the better classes have gradually aban- 
doned the old custom, and in places where 
the fairs still exist they are chiefly frequented 
by servant girls. In some towns they have 
degenerated into saturnalia. Housemaids, 
who ask leave to attend them, stay away a 
week, and return at the end of that time un- 
married often, and much the worse, physi- 
cally and morally, for their seven days' 
carousing. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

MONKS AND NUNS. 

Whiting of Russian nuns nearly forty 
years ago, M. de Custine gave them a char- 
acter for the most dissolute morals. They 
were as bad then as some of their French sis- 
ters in the seventeenth century who provoked 
Diderot to write his ' Rcligieuse ; ' and they 
have not improved since. They may have 
renounced the devil, but the devil does not 
renounce them. 

There are only about 7,000 of them in the 
whole empire, as against 9,000 monks ; and 
the orders of both sexes are scattered among 
800 convents. This would give each estab- 
lishment an average of no more than twenty 
inmates ; but a number of postulants and 
novices must be added who act as servants 
to those who have taken their vows. The 
four great lauras, as the large monasteries 
are called, contain about 150 monks apiece ; 
two of the first-class nunneries have more 
than one hundred sisters ; but many coun- 
try-town conventual institutions boast but 
three or four friars or nuns, who are all scan- 
dalously fat and rich, and lead lives which 
one might think would tempt the lazy and 
good-for-nought among the people to look 
upon them with envy. 

It is just the contrary, and the monastic 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



17 



orders are extremely difficult to recruit, not- 
withstanding that the bishops resort to coax- 
ing and even to coercion for the purpose. 
Originally a man could only become a monk 
at thirty and a woman a nun at forty ; and 
postulants for orders were obliged to prove 
that they were of noble or ecclesiastical fam- 
ily ; but these conditions have been abrogat- 
ed, and nothing is required now but a know- 
ledge of reading and writing. Yows are not 
eternal either, but may be recanted after 
formalities which can be much simplified by 
the customary national talisman of a bribe in 
the proper quarters. On the other hand, 
monks and nuns are constrained to celibacy ; 
they lose what property they possessed as 
civilians (it goes to their heirs, as if they 
were dead), and if they re-enter civil life they 
SIE debarred during a term of seven years 
from entering the service of the Crown, in- i 
heriting or buying land, or inhabiting the , 
cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow. 

It may be that these rules have something 
to do with the repugnance of Russians for 
monastic life, but one must rather attribute 
the feeling to the universal abhorrence and 
contempt in which the ' black clergy ' are ! 
held. They are wealthy, powerful, and arro- ; 
gant. but pariahs for all that. However, a i 
Russian who can surmount his objection to 
enter an execrated caste finds his lines cast in 
very pleasant places. All the high digni- j 
taries of the Church — metropolitans, arch- j 
bishops, archimandrites, abbots, and priors — j 
are chosen from among the monks ; and the 
nuns can rise to such dignities as abbesses, 
prioresses, and holy mothers. It is computed [ 
that the abbots of "the laura3 pocket £10,000 
a year apiece, and those of the smaller mon- 
asteries at least £2000. The abbesses are 
equally well off. About a year ago one who 
had held her office ten years created a scan- ! 
da] by going off to France without leave to 
get married, and the Jf/neoto Gazette revealed i 
that she had amassed more than a million of : 
roubles. 

All this money is earned through the gross i 
su|>erstition which in Russia does duty for 
religion, Monks and nuns sell tapers, holy 
relics, images, wedding-rings, and indul- 
gences ; they sell prayers, blessings, and the 
right of burial within monasteries, which 
wealthy Russians prize highly and for which 
they pay by sums bequeathed in their wills. 
It is seldom that a Russian of high rank is 
buried elsewhere than in a convent. Then 
the monks are sturdy beggars, and it is con- 
sidered unlucky to send them away empty- 
banded. They knock at every door ; and 
turn to account every domestic event which 
may induce generosity — weddings, christen- j 
ings, windfalls of money, or promotion in 
the service. They have been known to call J 
upon fashionable gamblers who were report- 
en to have won largely at cards, and upon 
opera-songstresses who had been lucky iu 
the matter of diamonds. A rich foreigner, 
alighting at a fashionable hotel, is waited 
upon by a monk who begs for a charity ; if [ 
he give readily a nun comes on the morrow, 
(hen another monk, a second nun and so on \ 
— all bearing the same stereotyped smile of 
abject humility. Towards the rich they are i 
obsequious, with persons of the middle- ! 
class familiar, to the poor insolent ; but, 
whatever contempt may be felt for them by 
boyardor mujick, no one cares to cross them, 
for it is as true in Russia to-day as it was in j 
England before the Reformation that ' if you 
do but speak ill of a friar's dog, a thousand 
monks exclaim " An heresy ! an heresy !" ' j 

If monastic property had remained invio- 
late through centuries, the Russian orders 
would by this time own half the land in the 
country ; but Peter the Great, Elizabeth, 
and Catherine II. all laid ruthless hands upon 
their estates, and for this reason monks no \ 
longer care to be presented with lands. Offer 
some productive acres to an abbot, and he 
will tell you plainly that he prefers cash or j 
jewels, as ' easier to distribute among the j 



poor,' the truth being that the friars never 
give away a kopeck. They live subject to 
no rule, and do not even eat or pray iu com- 
mon. 

Enter the laura of Troitza, some sixty 
miles from Moscow, which is the largest 
monaster}" of the country, and you find a 
regular city full of churches and image- 
shops. There are no fewer than five-and- 
forty churches within the walls, some large, 
some small, but all full of the tombs of noble- 
men, and also of shrines amazingly rich and 
beautiful. The chapel of St. Serge, the 
founder of the order, is one mass of gold, 
diamonds, and emeralds, which will sorely 
tempt the cupidity of the Government when- 
ever Russia gets a needy ruler bold enough to 
brave the prejudice which has hitherto held 
monastic jewels more sacred than monastic 
lands. 

The monks of the Troitza live in the im- 
age-shops, each according to his fancy ; and 
it is generally understood that after remitting 
half the earnings of their beggary and pious j 
sales to the abbot, they may keep the rest 
for themselves. They all wear long black 
gowns, with rope girdles and flowing beards, 
and they are waited upon, as above said, by 
the postulants, who are trained to religious ; 
habits by carousing in their company. Not j 
so long "ago it was the custom to recruit the 
tanks of monkery by regularly impressing 
some of the worst-behaved pupils in the four 
ecclesiastical academies of St. Petersburg, 
Moscow, Kiew, and Kazan ; but nowadays 1 
bishops institute inquiries as to schoolboys 1 
and university students who have a taste for 
study and disputation, and interest is brought 
to bear upon their parents, who send the 
lads to be cowled often sorely against their 
will. 

Some few sons of clergymen take the habit 
from ambition, and some noblemen's sons J 
for the purpose of enriching their ruined 
families ; and there is a percentage of monks 
who were popes, but became disqualified 
from holding benefices owing to the deaths | 
of their wives. No man, however, becomes 
a friar in Russia from ardent spiritual voca- 
tion or from disenchantment at the vanities 
of this world : for the monkish life is one 
of money-making, turbulent imposture, in- 
trigue, and notorious license. M. Katkoff, 
who cannot lie suspected of iconoclastic pro- 
clivities, has over and over again clamored 
for the abolition of the monasteries and the 
appropriation of their property to educa- 
tional purposes. He forgets, however, that 
a great deal of this property, being portable, 
would melt away with startling suddenness 
if there were any serious rumors of disestab- 
lishment. 

The Government has no present intention 
of meddling with the black clergy, because 
they serve it too well. The monks and nuns 
act as spies and propagators of religious 
fanaticism, which is often useful for political 
purposes. Despised as they are, the super- 
stition which brings so much money into 
their hands is a great force ; and they can 
work it like a lever for the doing of mighty 
things. Nothing is more incomprehensible 
than the sentiment which makes a Russian 
grovel before a holy image while he sneers at 
the church servant who carries it ; but it is a 
fact that the evil reputation which monks 
and nuns enjoy, and deserve, does not pre- 
vent them from bowing the necks of the 
haughtiest boyards and worming all their se- 
crets out of them. For instance, if a lady of 
rank falls ill, a nun presents herself as nurse, ] 
and is admitted without parley, because pub- j 
lie opinion would accuse the lady's husband 
of heartless indifference to his wife's recov- 
ery if he turned away a woman whose pres- 1 
ence would bring divine blessing into the I 
house. Of course the nun does no nursing, I 
but she feeds well, mumbles some prayers by i 
the patient's bedside, and work3 upon her I 
superstitious terrors with a plausibility bred 
of long practice. Before she leaves the house | 



she knows all about its concerns ; and that 
knowledge is soon conveyed, if needful, to 
the police office. 

So it is with the monks, who visit hospi- 
tals, fairs, schools, and barracks. Russians 
are quite aware that the inviolability of con- 
fession as understood by their clergy, but es- 
pecially by the black clergy, is a mockery : 
but this does not make them more reticent ; 
for they speak out of a terrified feeling that 
the unworthiness of the minister has nothing 
to do with the sacredness of his office, and 
that to tell a monk untruths would be to 
court ill-luck. That dread of ill-luck which 
makes a Russian wear turquoises and ban 
opals, carry a bit of scarlet cloth in his pocket 
and start if he upsets a spoonful of salt, 
acts as efficiently upon the free-thinker as 
upon the Old Muscovite who believes that 
the dry bones in the catacombs of Kiew 
come to life every year on the feast of St. 
Paul at midnight. 

A Russian may scoff at the powers above, 
but he has a great respect for those below ; 
and the theology which bishops inculcate 
both in the pulpit and in the boudoirs, where 
they are admitted because of the tattle they 
would retail if kept out, is largely descriptive 
of pranks which Satan plays upon the un- 
faithful by the agency of ghosts, apparitions, 
crosses in love, and money. When the Gov- 
ernment were minded to embark in the Turk- 
ish war, the clergy were ordered to kindle 
public enthusiasm for a crusade against the 
infidel Turk ; and they did so with remark- 
able zeal and unanimity. The pious move- 
ment, begun in the Empress's drawing-room 
through the metropolitan of St. Petersburg, 
was carried into all the drawing-rooms of the 
nobility by the archimandrites, and among 
the people by the monks and nuns, who took 
care to be no losers by the general outburst 
of orthodox piety. For weeks and months 
the convent churches were crowded with 
officers and soldiers, who brought their 
swords or bayonets to be blessed by being 
placed, for money, tipon some shrine ; and 
so long as the war lasted the wives and 
mothers of the unlucky men at the seat of 
war were pouring more and more money into 
the hands of the monks by the purchase of 
amulets, to render their beloved ones invul- 
nerable. Religion is a paying concern when 
conducted in this way. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

SOCrETY. 

Russian's are extremely sensitive to the 
opinion of foreigners ; and this renders them 
amiable to a point which quite charms a 
stranger on his first arrival in the country. 
The stranger's second impression, formed at 
the end of a week or two, is that there is a 
good deal of acting in the society-manners 
of his hosts ; his third, which begins to shape 
itself towards the close of a month, is that 
he has heard an uncommon number of un- 
truths. The humility with which Russians 
affect to speak of the backwardness of their 
country covers a deep feeling of pride in its. 
strength ; and while they seem to invite criti- 
cism, they really resent it. 

This appears when a Russian has become 
sufficiently intimate with you to throw off 
the mask and challenge comparisons between 
your country and his ; then he brags of his 
superiority with brutal bluntness. His Czar 
is popular ; his country wonderfully ad- 
vanced, considering the drawbacks of cli- 
mate ; his army is the largest and finest go. 
ing ; and the people are religious and con- 
tented, which is more than can be said of 
those in other States which he has visited. 
A Russian's dislike for despotism, as ex- 
pressed in drawing-room conversations, 
comes chiefly from the fact that despotism is 
unfashionable abroad ; so that the advocacy 
of it seems ridiculous to cultivated foreign, 
ers. A Russian is also afraid that any apol- 
ogy for autocracy coming from his lips 
might be construed into a servile fear of his 



18 

masters ; so that he forces his liberal utter- 
ances to a pitch which is often extravagant. 
In pursuance of the same spirit he dabbles in 
conspiracies, and would join in a revolution 
without having any clear end in view, but 
simply under the belief that he was discharg- 
ing his duties as an enlightened being accord- 
ing to Western notions. 

Fashion is the upper class Russian's god, 
and all his efforts tend to show strangers 
that he is on a level with the latest theories 
in politics, religion, and social ethics. He 
is the most difficult creature to instruct, be- 
cause he professes to know everything ; and 
he is hard to learn from, because he invents 
with unblushing effrontery. A visitor in 
Russia must believe a tenth of what he hears, 
and keep his eyes about him ; then he soon 
comes to the conclusion that if Russians were 
what they affect to be, their country would 
not be what it is. 

All that has been written for politico-senti- 
mental purposes as to the Russian's love of 
fair play is pleasant nonsense ; for chivalry 
of conduct is not compatible with the total 
absence of moral rectitude and entire scepti- 
cism as to the value of truth. A Russian will 
talk like a Bayard, because he has learned to 
do so in books ; and he will out of vanity do 
splendidly ostentatious things ; but he is im- 
pact with the treachery of the Greek and 
Tartar races, and both in love and war will 
a compass by stratagem what he cannot win 
by might. 

As to humanitarianism, the kindness of a 
people may be pretty accurately gauged by 
its treatment of political offenders ; and it is 
enough to say on this head that no Russian 
seems to have any notion that punishment 
should be proportioned to an offence. Tell a 
boyard that you have seen prisoners who 
have lain for a couple of years in a foul gaol 
awaiting trial and he will answer naively 
that they were ' accused of conspiracy,' as if 
the mere fact of their being under suspicion 
was a sufficient excuse for any indignity or 
hardship that could be inflicted on them. 
There are plenty of Russians who, in Nicho- 
las's reign, have seen women knouted to 
death for seditious words ; but the recollec- 
tion has left no such shocking impression on 
their minds as it must have done if the sym- 
pathy which they claim to feel for the ' op- 
pressed Christians ' were anything better 
than a mockery. 

Russian hospitality is dazzling, The en- 
tertainments which are given by the richest 
nobles in St. Petersburg excel anything that 
can be seen elsewhere, because nowhere else 
can people afford to spend so much upon 
show. The rich in Western States have 
claims upon their fortunes, and spend a good 
deal in improving their estates ; but a Rus- 
sian draws all he can from his land and gives 
back little or nothing. He disburses prodi- 
gally for wines, music, diamonds, and rich 
dresses for his wife ; he keeps an immense 
retinue of servants ; gambles largely, what- 
ever may be his age or profession ; and the 
surplus of his income goes to defray journeys 
to Paris, Nice, and the German watering- 
places, where he seems to set his ambition on 
enriching hotel-keepers. 

Art is but little patronized, and it may 
even be doubted whether Russians are so 
fond of music as they seem to be, for the 
music one hears at concerts and operas is al- 
ways the newest, and for old there is no de- 
mand. Gounod and Lecocq are mentioned 
in the same breath, as if they were com- 
posers of equal excellence ; and during the 
ephemeral craze for Wagner, Meyerbeer and 
Mozart were alluded to as though their reign 
had definitively vanished. 

No man catches the cant of a passing 
Western fashion so fast as a Russian ; but 
he can seldom attune himself to foreign 
thought, so that all his tact in observing 
strangers does not save him from occasional- 
ly comitting amusing blunders when he 
talks of things about which he affects to 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 

know much more than he really does. In 
this respect the faultless accent of Russians 
in speaking foreign languages (which comes 
from the multitude of consonances which 
they have to master in learning their own) is 
apt to blind one to their ignorance of the 
spirit of the tongues which they prattle so 
well. It is their own fault if one remarks 
this ; for if they were content to be and to 
seem Russians they might still claim credit 
for being the best linguists in the world : it 
is only because the}' aspire to be thought 
' Parisians of the North ' that one is forced to 
see that they have only the outer varnish of 
their models. However, Russians of the up- 
per classes are in general very well educated, 
and if they continued to instruct themselves 
after leaving their private tutors, they would 
be the most accomplished aristocracy in Eu- 
rope. Unfortunately the young boyard, 
whose attainments at twenty excite surprise 
and admiration, has learned nothing more at 
thirty, and at forty has unlearned much, and 
settled into the grooves of official thought. 

This rule is universal ; there are scarcely 
any exceptions to it. Many a young Russian 
who has been admirably brought up at home 
by French and German masters starts in life 
with ardent hopes and generous desires to aid 
in righting some of the abuses which he 
sees ; but he is enrolled in the Tschinn as an 
officer or Civil servant, and soon learns that 
originality of thought is dangerous. If he 
persists in airing crotchets of reform after 
his relatives have all adjured him to keep 
quiet, St. Petersburg will become too hot to 
hold him, and his ultimate fate will be exile 
to the Caucasus, if not something worse. A 
man may be a frondeur in Russia so long as 
he confines himself to talking ; the instant 
he shows himself bent upon action there is 
an end of him, socially speaking. 

The strength of the German element in 
Russian government has much to do with the 
perpetuation of this state of things ; for if 
the genuine Muscovites had their country to 
themselves they could hardly command en- 
ergy enough to rule it with an iron hand and 
prevent it from going to pieces. The Rus- 
sian has Oriental qualities as well as vices. 
He is good-humored and indolent ; he will 
not oppress as a system, but only if he have 
an immediate interest in doing so ; his vani- 
ty makes him dignified, and he will not 
brook much snubbing ; so that he abandons 
all the posts of official drudgery to the more 
patient, plodding Germans, who will submit 
to anything provided they can only force 
their way up slowly and surely. 

The number of Germans in the Tschinn is 
enormous, and, while they leave the brilliant 
show appointments to the Russians, they fill 
all the situations where power is wielded 
covertly. The Ministers of State, governors 
of provinces, and generals of divisions are 
Russians ; but the permanent clerks of de- 
partments, the governors' secretaries, and 
the officers of the military staffs are mostly 
Germans ; consequently a man cannot assail 
an abuse without attacking a German and 
bringing up a host of the latter's country- 
men to the rescue. The consciousness of 
this induces many Russians to speak of their 
Government as if it were a thing in which 
they had no part or parcel ; and it accounts 
for the number of conspiracies fomented by 
men who profess loyalty to the Czar, but de- 
clare themselves to be aiming at the over- 
throw of the official clique by whom their 
monarch is held in bondage. 

Of course these conspiracies fail miserably, 
and it is only very guileless enthusiasts who 
could expect them to succeed, considering 
the power of the police system which rests 
in German hands. The cautious old-stock 
Russians hold aloof from such things, and 
resign themselves to a trust in Providence for 
the remedying of such evils as they may in- 
dividually deplore. Meanwhile the depravity 
of Russian society proceeds from the en- 
forced idleness of its richest members. Be- 



ing allowed no initiative in any matter of re- 
form, political or social — afraid to act, afraid 
to disturb anybody, confined to intrigue or 
frivolous Court duties — they are consumed 
with ennui, and seek in extravagance, licen- 
tiousness, and sensationalism a relief from 
the overpowering monotony of existence. 1 
Nature has endowed many of them with ; 
brilliant gifts, but Government compression 
dwarfs their moral growth and causes them 
to remain big children, whose only object is 
to amuse and be amused, to pone and evoke 
from foreigners if not real admiration at least 
wonder and benevolent flattery. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE GOVERNMENT OF POLAND. 

Sentimental admirers of Russian policy 
would be much assisted in forming a con- 
clusion as to the happiness that awaits any 
Eastern provinces which the Holy Empire 
may conquer if they would first visit Rus- 
sian Poland. A preliminary journey to 
Posen and Gallicia, belonging respectivelv to 
Germany and Austria, would be desirable, 
because else the sentimentalist might fancy 
that the things to be witnessed in and around 
Warsaw are but hardships inseparable from 
foreign domination. The Prussian and Aus- 
trian Poles are, however, as much conquered 
peoples as their countrymen under Russian 
sway ; and if it be necessary to persecute 
the latter then it might be justifiable to grind 
down the former also, and by a similar pro- 
cess of reasoning Germany could not do oth- 
erwise than brutally oppress the lately an- 
nexed populations of Alsace-Lorraine. But 
it may be safely said that if the Alsacc-Lor- 
rainers had been made to endure one thou- 
sandth part of what the Russian Poles have 
suffered and are suffering now, every Eng- 
lishman would exclaim in disgust ; and 
there is not a man of heart in this country 
who would find a word to excuse the authors 
of such iniquity. 

Russian cruelty has only been seen dimly 
through a haze, because Poland is far off 
and the means of collecting information 
there are few and precarious. There is no 
independent Polish press. A Pole who 
should write letters from Warsaw to West- 
ern newspapers would soon be detected and 
sent to Siberia. If an Englishman visits 
Poland as a tourist, he finds the natives fear- 
ful to speak the truth, for they well know 
what it might cost them to do so ; whence he 
falls back for his facts upon the polite Rus- 
sian officials, who are always communicative 
about things to their own advantage, and 
perhaps he goes away with the impression 
that, since the Poles continue to buy and sell 
and are not flogged in the streets, they can- 
not be so wretched after all. Nevertheless, 
books full of fearful records have been pub- 
lished by Polish gentlemen of unimpeacha- 
ble good faith, and the extoller of Russian 
chivalry might learn the truth from them if 
he pleased. He might also learn it from 
Polish refugees, who are not scarce in Eng- 
land or France, and whose tales of atrocities 
are by no means things to smile at. The 
materials for judging Russian conduct in 
Poland exist plentifully around us, and they 
are such as, if honestly investigated, would 
show up the vaporings about Russian Chris- 
tian zeal as trumpery which it is not seemly 
for rational men to credit. 

After the crushing of the Polish rebellion 
of 1863-4 — which the Russians had fomented 
for some years with a view to more thor- 
oughly crushing it— the policy inaugurated by 
the conquerors was that of totally eradicating 
the national element in the country. Every 
landowner who had not taken an active part 
against the insurgents had his property con- 
fiscated and was exiled ; all who had person- 
ally joined in the rebellion and could be 
caught were transported to Siberia, and are 
there still, if alive. Women and girls shared 
the fate of the men, so did boys. In some 
disaffected districts whole villages were trans- 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



ID 



ported ; and by a refinement of cruelty the 
rule ■which allows ordinary criminal convicts 
to correspond at intervals with their friends 
was not applied to these political offenders, 
so that the poorer among them, "who could 
not bribe itinerant Jew merchants to carry 
letters for them and bring back replies, have 
been entirely cut off from the outer world. 
To this day Polish refugees in England who 
write to the Russian Government to inquire 
whether their fathers, mothers, or brothers 
are still living obtain no answers, nor is it of 
the slightest use for them to send money in 
hopes lhat it will reach Siberia. 

Once Poland had been cleared of its rebel 
population, German and Russian immigrants 
were put into the vacant peasant holdings, 
and the larger estates were given to Court 
favorites, who seldom reside on them but 
leave the management to their agents. The 
next thing was to prohibit the teaching of 
the Polish language in schools, and its use 
in commercial transactions, in public docu- 
ments, and even in churches. In 1867 the 
attempt made against the Czar's life in Paris 
by Berezowski induced the Government to 
dismiss all French masters from the schools, 
and dow French is not taught. The Pole is 
hound to learn Russian. He could not get 
on without it, for every official from the 
highest to the pettiest insists upon being ad- 
dressed in that tongue. 

The publication of books or newspapers in 
Polish has been made a penal offence, and 
the Polish works accumulated in private 
libraries have long ago been seized. The 
mess censorship may Ikj evaded in Russia, 
but not in Poland, where information is only 
allowed to penetrate through the medium of 
official journals and works which have re- 
ceived the iBtprimaiur of the Public Instruc- 
tion Department at St. Petersburg. Stran- 
gers on arriving in the country are stripped 
not only of their books and periodicals, but 
even 01 such scraps of newspaper as they 
may have used to wrap up their boots, and 
these are only restored to them when they 
recross the frontier. Polish boys are edu- 
cated out of Russian histories which treat of 
their country with contempt, and at the uni- 
versity they have to sit still while professors 
demonstrate to them that their patriot fathers 
were brigands. 

Public spirit has been stamped out by this 
implacable tyranuy ; but resignation offers 
no defence against the ill-treatment of offi- 
cials, for it is part of the governing system 
to make the Poles feel the yoke constantly on 
their necks. A Pole who is molested by a 
Russian brings his case before Russian 
judges, anil cannot get redress. If a Rus- 
sian is molested by a Pole, man or woman, 
the latter is thrown into prison and flogged. 
Polish women have been forbidden to wear 
mourning, because they used to attire them- 
selves in black on national anniversaries. 
They also come to trouble if their costumes- 
show any assortment of scarlet and white, 
which are the national colors. 

All the professions, even the medical, have 
been closed to Poles who refuse to take an 
oath which would make them renegades to 
their country's cause and to their religion, 
for the first pledge exacted of a Christian 
Pole ' who submits,' as the term goes, is that 
he shall embrace the Russian Orthodox faith. 
Failing this, he cannot open a shop in his 
own name, nor buy land, nor become a 
school teacher. When he has served his 
term of ten years in the army (and no money 
can bay him exemption) he may come back 
and till the soil, or work as a mercantile 
clerk, or enter into secret partnership with a 
Jew trader. The Jews are better treated than 
the Christians, for they took a less overt part 
in tin; last rebellion, and are not in general 
disposed to conspire. Besides, they have 
contrived to remain wealthy as a body, and 
are protected by the influence of their still 
richer co religionists in Russia. 

As many Catholic Poles as could escape 



from their unhappy country have done so, 
and some others have turned renegades from 
weariness ; but a large number remain, ad- 
hering to the customs of their nationality, 
their religion, and even to their hopes of 
future independence, with a quiet tenacity 
which no persecutions can shake. The Poles 
are naturally a quick-witted people, genial 
and sensitive. The women are proverbially 
beautiful and sweet-tempered, but they are 
endowed with a courage which used to make 
the iron-handed Count Berg say that a Pol- 
ish woman and a priest together could check- 
mate any police-office. 

Since these words were uttered care has 
been taken to break the power of the priests ; 
for almost all the Catholic churches have 
been closed, and such few as remain have 
priests who are generally in the pay of the 
police and use the confessional as a means for 
extracting information as to alleged conspira- 
cies. None of the conspiracies one hears of 
from time to time in Poland are genuine, for 
a Pole would be out of his senses who took 
to plotting under present circumstances ; but 
it suits the Government to keep Russian 
opinion in continual alarm as to Polish de- 
signs, besides which the frequent punishment 
of accused rebels is intended to strike terror 
among the Poles serving in the army. These 
men never amalgamate fairly with their con- 
querors. Notwithstanding the precautions 
that are taken in consigning them to regi- 
ments far from their country and to put as 
few of them together as possible, the handful 
of Poles in every garrison will be sure to 
consort with one another and to keep aloof 
from their comrades, although they may have 
no seditious purpose in so doing, but be sim- 
ply following the law of attraction which 
makes men of superior mind associate with 
their fellows. 

It is this intellectual supremacy of the Pole 
over the Russian which gives the conqueror 
so much difficulty in prosecuting the odious 
task he has undertaken, and which makes 
him hate his enslaved foe with incredible bit- 
terness. He finds that the Pole remains a 
Pole in spite of all. He comes back from 
the army a Pole. If he have abjured his 
faith, taken service iu Russia, and made pro- 
fession of abhorring his countrymen, he is a 
Pole still, and secretly hankers after the 
country which he has betrayed. He remains 
a Pole in Siberia. If he goes abroad, he as- 
serts his separate nationality ; if he works 
his way by apostasy to the higher Govern- 
ment circles, he advocates Polish interests 
almost insensibly. 

When the Russian police pay one of their 
frequent domiciliary visits to the houses of 
respectable Poles they are surprised to find 
toddling children beginning to lisp Polish, 
and they lay hands on Polish books and 
I rench reviews which have got into the 
country Heaven knows how ; and if they 
cross-question children who are of age to an- 
swer, they discover them to be fully alive to 
the fact that the history taught them iu the 
public schools is a mockery. The pretext taken 
for inventing conspiracies is often some sedi- 
tious word which a child has innocently ut- 
tered, and which is imputed to his parents ; 
but more frequently the authorities avail 
themselves of some intercepted letter tending 
to show that a Pole is in correspondence 
with one of the National Committees in Lon- 
don, Paris, or New York. 

These committees arc the bugbears of the 
Russian Government, although, having spies 
to watch the refugees, the Russian police 
need have no great fear of their machina- 
tions. But it is the perpetuation of Polish 
Nationalism which incenses the champions 
of the ' oppressed Bulgarian.' for so long as 
there remains a man to speak the Polish lan 
guage the work which they have iu view 
will not be completed. The Russians have 
set themselves to reduce Poland to a mere 
geographical expression, and they will perse- 
vere in their task as they have begun it un- 



less some xmforeseen events should occur to 
check them. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD. 

A stranger who attends an official recep- 
tion in Russia is surprised at the quantity of 
stars glittering on the b'reasts of persons who 
seem to be of no great account ; but this sur- 
prise increases at reviews of troops, where 
colonels are as profusely constellated as the 
field-marshals of other countries, and where 
subalterns are often adorned with a dozen 
medals, as though they had spent their whole 
lives in warring. 

Dist inctive symbols have been so multiplied 
in Russia that every man in the Crown ser- 
vice gets a cross or star soon or late ; but 
these decorations are not the less valued from 
being common, for they are only common 
within certain spheres, and they enable a 
connoisseur in orders to tell by a glance at a 
man's coat what his degree of infiueuce is. 
It makes all the difference in the awe which a 
tschinovnik inspires whether his waistcoat 
be crossed by a pink ribbon passing from left 
to right, or by a scarlet one slung from right 
to left. The knight in dark blue envies the 
one in red and yellow ; the latter sighs to 
think that there are men so supremely happy 
as to walk about in yellow and black ; and 
tills last class raise their trembling eyes 
towards the serener regions where Olympian 
beings have the glory of showing themselves 
with a baud of heavenly azure blue on their 
dress shirts. 

The light blue ribbon belongs to the order 
of St. Andrew, which is the first in the Em- 
pire. Founded in 1098 by Peter the Great, 
it ranks with the highest foreign orders — the 
Garter of England, the Spanish Golden 
Fleece, the Black Eagle of Prussia, and the 
order of St. Stephen of Hungary. It is re- 
served for members of the Imperial family, 
foreign sovereigns of the higher kind, and 
men of universal fame as statesmen or com- 
manders, like Gortschakoff, Bismarck, and 
Von Moltke. The insignia include a gold 
collar-chain and an eight-pointed star, with 
a blue eagle on it, which the Czar usually 
presents in brilliants. 

The second order is that of St. Catherine, 
for ladies, also founded by Peter the Great, 
in remembrance of the services which his 
wife had rendered him in his campaign 
against the Turks. The Empress acts as 
Grand Mistress, and the members wear a 
broad pink ribbon with silver border, t' 
which is suspended an image of St. Cathe- 
rine, and on the left breast a silver star with 
a white cross on a red ground. The mem- 
bers are mostly queens and princesses or la- 
dies belonging to the very highest rank at 
Court. 

The Order of St. Alexander Newsky, 
which has a plain pink ribbon, a red enam- 
elled cross, and a six-pointed star, is the 
I bird in importance. It was founded by Pe- 
ter the Great, and sports the motto, ' Za 
troudi i otechestvo ' (for fatigues and the 
fatherland). All Knights of St. Andrew be- 
long to it of right, and the other members 
are mostly personages of the first three ranks 
in the Tschinn, who are supposed to have 
' wearied ' themselves in their country's ser- 
vice. Next we have the Order of St. Anne, 
which has four classes and corresponds some- 
what with the Bath iu England. The rib- 
bon is scarlet with a yellow border ; and is 
worn across the breast with a star by the first 
class ; round the neck with a red enamel 
cross by the second ; at the button-hole in a 
small bow by the third ; and at the sword- 
hilt in a knot by the fourth. This fourth 
class is confined to military and naval officers, 
but rewards staff services rather than those 
rendered in the field. 

The chief military order is that of St. 
George, which was founded by Catherine II., 
ami also comprises four classes of very un- 
equal importance. To be a first-class mem- 



20 



THE RUSSIANS OP TO-DAY. 



her of the Order of St. George, a general 
must have commanded in chief before the 
enemy, and have won several battles. Even 
the Czar is not exempted from this condition, 
and the present Emperor was till lately only 
a knight of the second class. For a long 
time Marshal Bariatinski was the only first- 
class knight, but since the Franco-German 
war the Emperor of Germany and Prince 
Frederick Charles have been added. The 
second and third classes of St. George are 
conferred without much restriction as to 
merit, and into the fourth all officers are ad- 
mitted as a right after twenty years of ser- 
vice and goodconduct. The ribbon of this 
decoration is yellow and black, and the cross 
is of white enamel with a golden effigy of St. 
George and the Dragon. 

The Order of St. Wladimir, whose ribbon 
is pink and black, was instituted by Cathe- 
rine II., to recompense civil and military 
merit and serve as a stepping-stone to the 
higher orders. Its insignia may be seen on 
the tunics of Court colonels who are scarcely 
twenty-live years old. Then come two Pol- 
ish orders, which were made Russian in 
1832— that of St. Stanislas, which has a dark 
blue ribbon and a golden star with eight 
points ; and that of the White Eagle, which 
has a red and white ribbon and a red cross, 
on which two silver eagles are mounted. 

This last order has four classes, and it was 
originally reserved for persons who had held 
some civil or military post in Poland ; but 
now it is conferred pretty indiscriminately 
upon the aides-de-camp of provincial gov- 
ernors, upon provincial tschinovniks and 
members of the clergy. When a young offi- 
cer of rank has got the St. Wladimir, he 
looks to obtaining the St. Stanislas three or 
four years later as a matter of course. If 
war comes on, he gets the St. George, and 
perhaps the fourth class of St. Anne at the 
same time ; so that by the time he is thirty 
his coat is fairly encumbered. 

But in addition to these stars and crosses 
each order lias its medal, which is given to 
private soldiers and non-commissioned offi- 
cers, tradesmen holding municipal office, 
merchants, manufacturers, and other such 
small folks who are not connected with the 
Tschinn. Thus, a private soldier may win 
the medal of St. George, with yellow and 
black ribbon, that of St. Anne, with red, 
etc. ; and a mayor, a banker, a country jus- 
tice of the peace may be regaled with the 
blue ribbon and medal of St. Wladimir, the 
red and white of St. Stanislas, etc., though 
he will never be admitted to the honor of 
cross or star. 

Artists, literary men, civil engineers, and in- 
ventors stand in a category apart and may be 
rewarded either with medals, stars, or crosses, 
according to their merits, or, rather, accord- 
ing to the value placed upon the same' in 
high quarters. These extra-official nomina- 
tions are, however, concessions reluctantly 
made to the spirit of the age, and the Rus- 
sian Chancellerie has still such old-world no- 
tions as to the social position of mere geniuses 
that queer mistakes are often made concern- 
ing them. The. singer Tamburini used to 
strut proudly about the Newski Prospect 
some years ago with the medal of St. An- 
drew round his neck, thinking he had been 
favored with the first-class order, whereas 
this distinction placed him on about the same 
level as a well-conducted Court footman. 
Alexander Dumas the elder received the 
medal of St. Anne for a novel of Russian 
life ; but, hearing the small social value of it, 
he sent it back with a politely ironical letter, 
and received a cross of the second class by 
return of post, with profuse apologies for the 
error. To this day Parisian journalists, who 
are indefatigable beggars of decorations, 
often receive medals in return for the articles 
which they transmit to St. Petersburg, and 
they wear them innocently as decorations, 
causing Russians who see them to laugh in 
their sleeves. 



Besides their own native decorations, Rus- 
sian tschinovniks sport many foreign ones, 
for there is a constant interchange of stars 
and letters patent between the Courts of the 
three Emperors, as also with the little Courts 
of Greece and Germany. A Russian col- 
lects stars as an Englishman would curiosi- 
ties ; and the mania is not an inexpensive 
one, for it entails a disbursement of fees 
which are always large and sometimes ex- 
orbitant. 

Some Russian generals and senators are 
knights of more than thirty orders ; and no- 
body will be surprised to hear that it is these 
who affect most to wear no ribbons at all. The 
custom of going out to evening parties in 
plain clothes unadorned — d I'anglaise, as it is 
called in Russia — is one of recent birth, but 
it is growing apace ; and now high-class 
Russians no longer show their stars at the 
theatre and at private parties as they did as 
lately as ten years ago. At official recep- 
tions they have no choice, but must wear all 
the stars and crosses they possess, even 
though their bosoms should resemble a jew- 
eller's shop-front in consequence. This is a 
matter of discipline — of respect for the august 
giver of decorations ; and a man who should 
omit to wear any particular order would 
soon be asked whether he were ashamed of it. 

It cannot be denied, though, that the mul- 
tiplicity of decorations, still respected as they 
may be by the lower orders, has induced a 
contempt for such things among those who 
are obliged to wear them ; insomuch that a 
Russian whose breast is one blazing mass of 
gold, silver, and diamonds looks a little shame- 
faced in the presence of an Englishman of 
rank equal to his own whose coat is as ' dis- 
tinguished ' for its plainness as that of Mr. 
Canning which Prince Talleyrand admired 
at the Court of Charles X. The Russian 
seems to admit that he cannot possibly have 
done enough to deserve such liberal constel- 
lating, so he laughs off his splendor by say- 
ing, ' It is the custom of the country ; ' or else 
remarks, as the late Count Nesselrode did, 
' On nous decore dans ce pays pour eviter de 
nous payer. ' 

CHAPTER XX. 

TRAVELLING. 

Russia is the most uncomfortable of coun- 
tries to travel in. Such railways as there are 
run mostly in straight lines from terminus to 
terminus, without taking any account of the 
towns on their road. 

If you want to alight at a town half way 
down the line you find that the station which 
bears its name is some twenty miles distant 
from the town itself. You climb into a par- 
acladnoi, the three-horse truck without 
springs, and ask that your luggage may be 
put in with you. The station porter, clad in 
a touloupa reaching to his feet, smiles kind- 
ly, but cannot give you your luggage with- 
out the permission of some official who is ab- 
sent. It takes money to find this official. 
When he has consented to inspect the lug- 
gage, he proceeds to examine every article as 
if it were a new and curious invention. More 
money is required to stop him ; then you 
scramble into the truck again, and off it goes 
like wildfire, the Kalmuck driver yelling all 
the way, and thwacking the shafts with the 
stump of Ins whip to make you fancy that he 
is dragging the vehicle by himself. 

The bumping is something to remember ; 
for the roads are left to mend themselves, 
and in winter some of the ruts are big enough 
to hold coffins. In some districts a chance 
of being chevied by a pack of dinnerless 
wolves adds to the interest of the journey ; 
but if it be night a lantern with a strong re- 
flector hung at the back of the carriage will 
be enough to keep them from approaching. 
At length the town of your destination is 
reached, and, pounding along the unpaved 
streets with a last flourish of howls, the is- 
vostchik gallops into the courtyard of the 
place that calls itself an hotel. Out tumbles 



a flat-nosed ostler, whom the driver begins 
to thump and swear at, just to show a zeal 
in your service. Then comes the landlord, 
generally a German who talks broken French.' 
and whose accommodation for travellers con- 
sists in two or three rooms without beds and 
some hot water. 

It is expected that a traveller should brin^ 
his own provisions ; if he have not done so, 
he must pay r for food at famine prices — and 
what food ! It is no use asking for a chop 
or a steak, for the last gridiron seen in Rus- 
sia (except in private houses) was the one 
which Ivan the Terrible used for the broiling 
of refractory courtiers A chunk of beef 
stewed in sugar and vinegar and served with 
a saucerful of salted cucumbers and pickled 
cherries will be about the extent of the bill 
of fare ; though if there happen to be a wed- 
ding going on in the town, the landlord will 
run off to beg some choicer dainties, and re- 
turn in triumph with the leg of a goose 
stuffed with cloves, or a piece of pork braised 
with nutmegs and marsh-mallows. 

As to beds, they are quite a modern inno- 
vation in Russia, and many well-to-do houses 
are still unprovided with them. Peasants 
sleep on the top of their ovens, middle-class 
people and servants curl themselves up in 
sheepskins and lie down near stoves ; soldiers 
rest upon wooden cots without bedding, and 
it is only within the last ten years that the 
students in State schools have been allowed 
beds. A traveller must therefore roll him- 
self up in rugs and furs, and spend his night 
on the floor of his inn-room. Russians see 
no hardship in this, even if they be rich and 
accustomed to luxuries. They rather prefer 
boards to mattresses, and are first-rate travel- 
lers, for they make shift to sleep anywhere. 

A man had better not fall ill while in a 
Russian country town, for all the doctors 
outside the large cities are believers in phlc - 
botomy and violent purgatives. They pre- 
scribe tea, but drug it without telling you. 
and the effects are felt for days afterwards. 
Their fee is anything you like to give ; but 
whatever you may offer they will be sure to 
ask more, and must therefore be dealt with 
as bluntly as tradesmen. 

The prices of goods in Russian shops are 
assessed according to the apparent wealth of 
the customer. A stranger must first choose 
the article he wants, then offer what he 
thinks reasonable, and turn on his heel if the 
tender be declined. Should the tradesman 
hurry after him into the street, he may be 
sure that he has offered too much ; should 
he be allowed to go, his bid has really been 
too low ; and of course this is liable to hap- 
pen with persons accustomed to Western 
prices, for the cost of everything in Russia 
is exorbitant. A suit of fairly good clothes 
costs £14 ; a pair of knee boots, "£6 ; an ave- 
rage cigar, a shilling. The only cheap things 
are tea, vodki, and articles made of leather ; 
but even these cannot be had at a reasonable 
price unless bought through a native. 

In the large French hotels of St. Peters- 
burg, where Parisian furniture and beds arc 
to be had, the day's board for a bachelor 
without a servant cannot be put down at less 
than £2. The price of a single room will 
range from lof. to 20f. ; a table d'hote din- 
ner costs 12f. without wine ; a bottle of pale 
ale, 1 rouble ; one of champagne 5 roubles, 
and so on. Amusements, such as theatres 
and concerts, cost about three times as much 
as in England. On the Patti nights at the 
Italian Opera of St. Petersburg" the stalls 
are bought up by Jews ; and one can scarcely 
be procured under £5. At the French theatre 
there is often a similar agio on the seats, and 
the habitual playgoer has to add a reckoning 
for donations which he is expected to make 
in order that testimonials in jewellery may 
be presented to the leading performers at the 
end of the season. 

The theatres and restaurants of the capital 
are luxurious, and so are the first-class rail- 
way carriages on the line from St. Peters- 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



21 



burg to Moscow. If a stranger confined his 
travels to a journey on this line he would go 
away with a fine" idea of Russian comfort, 
for all the latest American improvements in 
the way of sleeping and dining cars, dressing- 
rooms," and attendance are available. Nor 
on this one line are there any vexatious for- 
malities about luggage and passports. Every- 
where else a passport is in constant request, 
and the only way to avoid exhibiting it a 
dozen times" a day is to produce a twenty- 
kopeck piece in its stead. The traveller who 
forgets the coin is liable to be invited to step 
into the police-office, where he will have to 
prove, by showing other papers, that the 
passport is really his and not one that he has 
stolen. 

There is one good side to travelling in 
Russia, and it is this : — If a stranger be not far- 
ing for commercial purposes, he will be made 
a welcome guest at the houses of the authori- 
ties in any town where he may wish to spend 
more than a day. The civil governor will 
despatch a secretary to his hotel, and be glad 
to have him to dinner for the sole sake of 
hearing what news he has to bring. 

This^is pleasant enough, and the^ hospitality 
is the more gracious as the passing stranger 
cannot make any return for it beyond thanks. 
On the other hand, a stranger who settles for 
any term exceeding a week in a country 
town will have to be careful of the company 
into which he falls ; for Russian friendship 
soon turns to familiarity, and one of the first 
manifestations of familiarity is to ask the 
stranger to take a hand at eearte. Then it 
becomes a question of refusing and being 
deemed a boor, or accepting and being 
prouptly cleaned out. 

The Russians are fearful gamblers, and a 
stranger with circular notes in his pockets is 
a godsend to them. They do not cheat ; but 
play and play until the result is utter impe- 
cuniousness to one of the two parties to the 
game. The women are as bad as the men, 
and think nothing of winning a few hundred 
napoleons from a stranger whom they have 
not known more than a week. It must be 
borne in mind that the ladies here alluded to 
are those of a certain rank, who affect to 
copy Parisian manners ; for those of the 
middle class do not show themselves to their 
husbands' guests. 

In country houses card-playing is the ordi- 
nary evening's amusement, counters being 
used when money is not forthcoming ; but 
in these places a stranger will often get two 
or three days' excellent shooting in return 
for the bank notes he drops on his host's 
table at night. Russian game consists of 
wolves, foxes, hares, partridges, and several 
varieties of wild fowl ; and a day with the 
guns leads to a turn out of all the rabble dog- 
gery of the country. All the mujicks round 
about leave their work to see the sport, and 
almost every one brings a dog with him. 
H ippily, the game is not wild, else it would 
be all scared away by the frantic shouts 
raised by the peasant every time a bird rises 
on the line of sight or a gray fox slinks away 
down a furrow. 

Another favorite country-house amusement 
is dancing, and a foreigner will be delighted 
by the pretty jigs which Russian ladies 
dance with scarves or shawls something after 
the fashion of the almees. They will sing, 
too, accompanying themselves with triangu- 
lar guitars rather like banjos. It should be 
mentioned that there is no colloquial equiva- 
lent in Russian to ' Sir ' or 'Madam,' and 
this puts social relations at once on a very 
friendly footing. Tschinovniks and their 
wives arc addressed by their inferiors as 
' Your High Origin ' or ' High Nobility,' as 
the case may be, but amongst equals the 
usual formula is to address a person by his 
Christian name coupled to that of his father 
— as thus, Paul-Petrowitch, i.e. Paul son of 
Peter ; and the same in regard to women, 

Maria-Nicolaievna, ' Mary, daughter of 
Nicholas. Needless to remark that the guest- 



chamber in a Russian country house is as de- 
void of beds as a country hotel. At most a for- 
eigner will be accommodated with an ottoman 
spread with catskins : but even if he have to 
lie on the floor, he will be sure to sleep, for a 
' nightcap ' will be given him in the shape of 
a pint bowl, full of a mixture of tea, egg 
yolks, and arak punch, enough to make him 
cry when he swallows it, and warranted to 
procure him a grand series of nightmares till 
morning. 

CHAPTER XXI. 

THE CZAK. 

The Sicod, or Russian code, describes the 
i Czar as an ' autocrat whose power is limit- 
] less, ' and in a catechism drawn up for the use 
of Polish schools it is stated that every sub- 
ject owes him 'adoration.' He has no 
| settled Civil List, but draws what he wants 
I from the Imperial Exchequer, every rouble 
in which is supposed to be his. When he at- 
tends cathedral service in state the native 
J press reports that ' his Majesty deigned to 
, kneel down ;' if he falls ill and gets phy- 
sicked he ' deigns to feel better.' 

He is not surrounded with that glamour of 
' awe which encompassed his iron-handed 
father, Nicholas ; but the lower orders re- 
vere him with heart and mind, and he needs 
j no escort to protect him when he drives 
: about St. Petersburg alone in his three-horse 
• sledge. Wherever he passes heads are bared 
in the piercing cold, and the mujicks bend 
double with their hands crossed over their 
breasts. At parades of his Guards he passes 
1 down the lines and cries, ' Good day, my 
! children ;' to which the men answer with 
I one shout, ' Good day, father. ' If he calls a 
I soldier out of the ranks to reward him, the 
man plumps down on both knees and ad- 
dresses him as 'father,' or 'little father,' 
with a fawning affection which is not as- 
' sumed for the occasion, but is deeply felt. 

The Czar would be waylaid in every street 
by petitioners if it were not a penal offence 
to address him without his permission ; for 
all Russians believe in his power to remedy 
their grievances by a mere word. He can 
pardon, degrade, or exalt ; he can ruin or 
make rich ; and being, as he is, a large- 
hearted man, he has occasionally used his 
power to perform startling acts of grace, 
which popular admiration has embellished in- 
j to legends. But he has very little real might, 
for his character is not strong enough to bear 
down obstacles, and he cannot endure to see 
sulky faces around him. He is a doting 
father, a generous friend, and a kind master. 
If his good impulses arc combated by those 
around him, he resists for a time ; but then 
succumbs, disheartened, for the good he 
might achieve would not compensate him for 
i the coldness he would have to encounter 
among those who had opposed it. 

Nicholas had no friends ; and no voice of 
wife or child ever shook his purpose oncehe 
had made up his mind that a thing ought to 
be done. Alexander, who was bred in the 
atmosphere of this icy despotism, loathed it, 
and from the first he showed that he wished 
to be served with love rather than obeyed 
with fear. All the firmness there was in his 
nature exhausted itself in the grand act of 
authority by which he inaugurated his reign 
— the emancipation of the serfs ; but this act 
— as bold as it was noble — could never have 
been performed if Alexander's courtiers had 
known him then as they do now. They 
j were old in servility, he was young and im- 
perious, and they imagined that he was go- 
■ ing to be like his father. Many hardened old 
boyards have deplored since that they did 
! not read their new master's character more 
j shrewdly ; but even as it was the opposition 
which the Czar had to ride down was tre- 
mendous, and the doing so all but cost him 
his throne, If one of his brothers had been 
willing to lead the malcontents, a palace 
conspiracy would have deposed him. Hap- 
pily, his brothers loved him and sympathized 



with his magnanimous declaration that he 
would not rule over a nation of slaves. 

The old nobility have never forgiven the 
emancipation. It impoverished many of 
them ; it destroyed the power and prestige of 
them all ; it was an act repugnant to their 
semi-Asiatic fondness for pomp and com- 
mand ; and they have revenged themselves 
by stubbornly combining to thwart all the. 
other reforms which the Czar had in view. 

This short-sighted policy has deprived them 
of the compensating advantages they might- 
have obtained ; for Alexander was willing to 
establish constitutional government, and to 
remove the weight of administrative tram- 
mels which prevents the country from de- 
veloping its resources. This, however, 
would have involved the abolition of the 
Tschinn — that is, of the last stronghold by 
means of which the boyards were able to 
weigh upon the country and to keep all its 
wealth to themselves ; and such a sacrifice 
could not be wrung from them by the prom- 
ise that they might exercise legitimate influ 
ence over government as hereditary magnates 
under a limited monarchy. 

It would have required another imperial 
burst of authority to daunt the tschinovniks ; 
the Emperor hesitated, and from the moment, 
lie did so the sceptre passed out of his hands. 
After all he could hardly do otherwise than 
hesitate, for every man whom he consulted 
entreated him not to entrust his throne to the 
hazards of popular rule. From the Prussian 
and Austrian Courts, from his own family 
(for the alarms of his brothers had by this 
time been aroused, and even from foreign 
ambassadors whom he sounded, he received 
the advice to let well alone. Why should he 
destroy the only autocracy in Europe for the 
sake of experimenting fads which had only 
produced confusion elsewhere ? The demo- 
cratic craze would smite Russia all too soon, 
and it was folly for an emperor to advance 
its coming by a single day. Let him rather 
show that despotism could do as great things 
as popular government, and by such means 
enhance the glory of kingship, at which it 
was the fashion of the age to carp. If he 
saw need for reform, let him reform sharply 
and unflinchingly as his father did ; but, for 
heaven's sake, let him keep the credit of 
everything he did for his own crown. 

Such was the advice given to a man who 
meant as well as ever Sovereign did mean, 
but who, if he had closed his ears to counsel, 
would have been obliged to throw himself for 
support on to a mass of fifty million manu- 
mitted slaves, who were steeped in the 
crassest ignorance and superstition, and who 
might soon have been deluded into taking 
him for an enemy. 

The risks were too great to run ; but the 
Czar did not at once renounce his projects 
of administrative reform, and for a while he 
sought to recover favor with the offended 
boyards by summoning them to confer with 
him in devising improvements in every branch 
of the State service. From this period dates 
the institution of juries, the municipal en- 
franchisement of the Mirs, and some conces- 
sions as to religious and commercial liberty ; 
but none of these innovations achieved what 
was expected from them, for the boyards gave 
only such advice as was calculated to further 
their own independence as landowners, and 
for the rest they took care that all reforms 
likely to assist the people overmuch should 
be strangled in the red tape of the TsChinn. 

The Czar saw at length how the wind 
blew, and abated a zeal which led to noth- 
ing. He had fits of impatience, and occasion- 
ally broke out into passionate threats, which 
made his obstructive servants tremble. More 
than once, on detecting an act of injustice or 
disobedience, he punished the offender with 
prompt and blighting disgrace ; and then so 
sternly insisted upon the execution of his or- 
ders that what he desired was done. But 
these eruptions were as the last efforts of a 
volcano which was exhausting itself. Every- 



22 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



one at Court knew that the Czar's weak spot 
lay in his heart, and that the coldness of 
those whom he loved could bring him to sub- 
jection. He was soon cajoled, hoodwinked, 
and led about by his weak points like a boy. 
Sundry placemen who had been his compan- 
ions in boyhood had the reputation of being 
able to do with him as they pleased. He 
•dreaded to offend them. If one of them 
wanted some impossible favor or was huffed 
at the exposure of some abuse in which he 
was concerned, he had only to leave St. 
Petersburg, and the Czar would mope about 
dismally for days. These tiffs always ended 
in the favorite getting everything he had 
schemed for. 

Alexander has never quarrelled with a per- 
sonal friend. Intrigues are hatched at Court, 
calumnies reach his ears, but nothing ever 
shakes his faith in a man whom he' has once 
admitted into his intimacy, liked, and trusted. 
It is only a pity that the men who have most 
enjoyed his confidence should in general have 
been conspicuously undeserving of it. He is 
not a shrewd selector of friends. Like many 
men of good heart, his unwillingness to give 
pain and his sensitiveness at receiving it tend 
to a softness which craves for constant sooth- 
ing ; not the flattery of servile compliments, 
but that of friendly attentions, good-humor, 
and kindness. The Czar likes to be thought 
a good fellow, and the men who have suc- 
ceeded best in managing him are those who 
had treated him with adroit familiarity, as if 
they were his equals and liked him for his 
personal qualities. A few of these very close 
cronies — Schouvaloff, Trepoff, Adlerberg II., 
and Barlatinski — are addressed by him as 
" Tu, ' and he keeps a kind of common purse 
with them, allowing them to draw ad libitum 
■on his private treasury which is inexhaustible. 

He is a good linguist ; he read much French 
literature when he was young, and he still 
delights in French novels, plays, and music, 
but Jus heart is German. He corresponds 
much with the Court of Berlin, and is always 
glad to get away to Ems, where he may be 
seen walking about the grounds of the Kur- 
:saal with a big Newfoundland dog on one 
side of him and some Prussian general on the 
other. The Czar drinks the waters on 
account of a disease in his throat, which ren- 
ders his articulation indistinct and prevents 
him from talking much. But he likes to be 
talked to, and is a great lover of hospitalities 
en petit comile, chiefly after the manner of 
those soupers de beaux esprits which Catherine 
II. used to give at the Hermitage, and where a 
great deal of champagne is cousumed. All 
this has made his mind indolent, and he is so 
altered from the Alexander of twenty years 
ago that the ring of courtiers who compose 
his inner circle of intimates have never cause 
to fear his breaking out into wrath if things 
go wrong. 

Mostly he never hears that things go 
wrong. During his voyages the institutions 
which he visits are placed in trim order be- 
fore his coming ; and no petty functionary 
cares to incur the animosity of the Tschinn 
by revealing abuses to him. He signs the 
documents which are submitted to him, but 
seldom reads them. Should he give an order 
on his own account, the Tschinovniks obey 
it if convenient ; if not, they palter and delay 
till he grows tired of alluding to the subject. 
Corruption is rife around the Czar, but he 
does not see it ; or, if he does, he either rinds 
himself at a loss on whom to throw the re- 
sponsibility, or else discovers that the culprit 
as one whom he could not bear to punish. 

Nicholas, who had tried in vain to check 
.administrative corruption, revenged himself 
by fierce sarcasm which he levelled point- 
blank at his courtiers like pistol shots, but 
Alexander II. never says disobliging things 
Jo anybody. He is not epigrammatic or joc- 
ular : one might think him devoid of the 
sense of humor bu^ for the vague smile that 
flits over his mouth now and then when some 
droll piece of meanness is revealed to him. 



His habitual mood is melancholy. A very 
tall, strikingly handsome man, as all the 
Romanoffs are, he carries himself with an 
erect bearing, looking every inch an autocrat ; 
but there is a sorrowful dreaminess in his 
eyes, which deepens at times into a vacant 
and almost haggard gaze. He seems to be 
imbued to the full with the responsibilities 
of his station, but to be conscious that a 
power more than mortal would be needed in 
order to enable him to do all the good which 
an Emperor should do. Melancholia has 
been the malady of his family. Paul, Alex- 
ander I., Nicholas, were all afflicted with it ; 
brooding as if their heads ached under the 
crushing weight of the crown, living in dread 
of palace conspiracies, of assassination, of 
omens which they discerned in the most 
trivial events. Alexander II. is a believer in 
omens, and as he advances in age, the more 
will his religious faith, which is deep, incline 
to superstition and mystic musings. 

Meanwhile, nothing in Russian policy must 
be taken as the outcome of his own resolu- 
tions, for he has long ceased to have any 
will but that of the men who have perverted 
his better nature. In foreign affairs, as in 
palace matters, he acts as he "is goaded to do. 
He may be pushed to do wrong, but he will 
think he is acting rightly, for he has an infi- 
nite belief in the advice of those who have 
most often misled him. 

CHAPTER XXII. 

THE CIIANCELLOR GORTSCHAKOFF. 

Prince Gortsciiakoff is one of the most 
agreeable men in Russia. Those who like 
him least acknowledge that, but few who 
have been brought much into contact with 
him have failed to like him as a man ; and 
those who appreciate him best are the men 
who have served constantly under his orders. 
He was born in 1798, and has been Prime 
Minister of Russia since 1856. 

He is the richest man in Russia, the sub- 
ject of highest rank in it, and ruler of the 
Empire ; nor could anything shake him from 
his post except a great national disaster, lead- 
ing to a unanimous public outcry against the 
Government. He is not a blunderer ; he has 
not had to fritter away his prestige in public 
speeches, as the statesmen of constitutional 
countries are obliged to do ; and he has kept 
so steadily to the policy of aggrandizing his 
country, that if he failed he would be pitied 
for having been ill-served by his instruments 
rather than condemned for his patriotic am- 
bition. 

Prince Gortsciiakoff would not have pros- 
pered as the Minister of a Parliamentary 
State, for the gifts which make him supreme 
at the council-table, in drawing-rooms, and 
in private colloquies with ambassadors would 
have been thrown away on popular assemblies. 
He has none of the bluff pelulancy of Bis- 
marck, nor of the smirking readiness of re- 
tort which enables Count Andrassy to man- 
age the Austro-Hungarian Parliaments. He 
talks slowly, writes grandiloquently, and 
gives high-minded reasons for everything he 
advises or does. 

Persons who might have expected him to 
explain some tortuous piece of policy on cyni- 
cal grounds are staggered by his semblance 
of perfect good faith and by the reassuring 
promises which he makes in a tone of stately 
gentleness, to which his venerable appearance 
gives the stamp of wisdom and truth. His 
strength is patience ; his talent lies in seizing 
opportunities the moment they arrive ; and 
these opportunities come through the sim- 
plicity of the foreigners who trust him. If 
he had been obliged to define his policy in 
noisy parliaments, to remould it agreeably to 
the crotchets of agitators, and to listen to the 
Babel tongues of factious newspapers, he 
would have achieved nothing ; and as to his 
inflation of language, it could have been 
pierced through in no time by the thrusts of 
debate — all the sharper to a man of his char- 
acter, as he has no sense of humor. 



Gortschakoff is a statesman on stilts. He 
sees over the heads of other men because he 
has never been forced to climb down and 
meet them on equal terms ; and he has the 
assurance which is natural in a man who has 
never experienced a difficulty in misleading 
his fellows, and who has seen all the schemes 
which he based on human credulity succeed. 
Many a Western statesman whose finesse 
has been blunted by the wear and tear of 
parliamentary life might have done greater 
things than Prince Gortschakoff had he en- 
joyed that diplomatist's exceptional oppor- 
tunities. But it has not been Gortschakoff 's 
ambition to do great things. The work which 
he cut out for himself was to prevent his 
country from changing, not to shunt it into 
new grooves of civilization or glory ; and 
patriotism, as he practises it, has nothing in 
common with the sentiment which prompts 
a ruler to promote the welfare and honor of 
his countrymen at large. 

Prince Gortschakoff is an Imperialist-Con- 
servative, who looks at all things from the 
point of view of the caste to which he be- 
longs, and who has sought to serve no inte- 
rests but those of that caste. If the motives 
of his policy were put into words they would 
be these : — ' The lines of a Russian boyard 
are cast in pleasant places, but how long this 
may last we don't know. There is a demo- 
cratic wind abroad which will some day blow 
upon our Court, our Tschinn, our large 
estates, and the enjoyable lives we lead inside 
our palaces ; but this is no reason why we 
should help to raise that evil wind. On the 
contrary, the best thing we can do is to 
ward it off as long as we can, and, when it 
does come, to contrive so that it does us as 
little damage as possible. ' 

Prince Gorlschakoff is not an ignorant 
man who is blind to the drift of popular cur- 
rents ; it is because he knows these currents 
so well that he endeavors to lead them and 
divert them from their proper course. Few 
men have done more than he to balk a na- 
tion's advance ; but he does not rashly boast 
that it is his object to resist the tide of prog- 
ress like those French Legitimists who are 
forever building up brick walls in sight of 
the waters. 

He had a great admiration for Lord 
Palmerston and for M. Thiers ; he likes all 
the politicians who have succeeded in leading 
the people without doing much for them. 
Having to deal with a Czar who was eager 
for reform, and with a nobility who were 
sullenly resolved to thwart all their Mon- 
arch's tendencies, he had a most difficult part 
to play ; but he played it shrew T dly. In the 
matter of the emancipation he stood by the 
Czar without helping him, but once that 
great reform had been accomplished he was 
the most fluent among the many advisers 
who deprecated further innovations on the 
loftiest moral grounds. 

The Czar saw in him a servant the main- 
spring of all whose acts was loyalty, while at 
the same time the Tschinovniks recognized 
in him an ally who would not let one of their 
privileges fall to the ground if he could help 
it. It is not too much to say that Gort- 
schakoff possibly saved his master's Crown, 
for if he had let himself be carried along by 
the Emperor's reforming impulses they 
might have both been swept away by the 
Tschinn ; whereas if he had stubbornly 
withstood the Imperial will he would have 
been dismissed, and his place given to some 
more pliant Minister, under whose rule a 
catastrophe of some sort would have been 
equally probable. 

To be sure that catastrophe might have 
affected the Tschinn most ; for with another 
Minister the Czar might perhaps have been 
able to override opposition, and, by breaking 
the power of the boyards, have rendered 
Russia a very different country from what 
it is. 

There is no saying, indeed, how the strug- 
gle between the Emperor and his nobles 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



23 



■would have ended ; and it is enough to re- 
mark that the Tschinovniks have cherished 
a debt of gratitude towards Gortschakoff 
which has impelled them to uphold his policy 
with all their might. In home affairs that 
policy has been extremely simple, for it has 
consisted in granting the "people nothing but 
what was imperatively called for, in then 
giving them the minimum of what they de- 
sired, and in doing so with as much ostenta- 
tion as was required to make them think they 
had obtained a great thing. 

The Russians who asked for judicial re- 
forms got juries which made their law courts 
worse than they had ever been, but satisfied 
the national vanity by making people think 
they were now on a level with other States. 
Those who wanted commercial and religious 
liberty obtained a reform of the guilds and a 
kind of tolerauce in faith which set all the 
trades wrangling amongst each other and all 
the religious sects by the ears ; finally, the 
craving for parliaments was diverted into a 
safe channel by the institution of municipal 
franchises and nobiliary assemblies, which 
enabled people of a talkative turn to expend 
their verbiage upon local affairs, instead of 
applying it to the disturbance of State busi- 
ness. All this, however, would not have 
sufficed to keep the big, simmering nation 
quiet if Gortschakoff 's foreign policy had not 
been conducted with a view to give the Rus- 
sians continued satisfaction by diplomatic 
and military victories. 

The Crimean campaign had been a fearful 
national humiliation : it was an obvious act 
of policy to efface all traces of it, and not an 
opportunity of so doing was neglected. First 
the crushing of the Polish rebellion was 
flaunted alxmt the country as a triumph, not 
over the wretched Poles only, but over France 
and England, who were known to sympathize 
with the rebels ; and after this came the series I 
of brilliant raids in Turkestan, the taking of 
Taschkend, the defeat of the Emir of Bok- 1 
hara, and the campaign of Khiva. All over 
Russia the official papers declared, and so did 
the popes, that these successes were so many ; 
blows at Great Britain ; and people were . 
consoled for their squalor, their poverty, and 
tat the oppressions of the Tschinn by seeing 
soldier relatives come home to them with 
their breasts covered with stars and medals. 

Among the mercantile classes the gratiflca- [ 
tion was equally great, for the opening up 
of easy communications with India haslong 
been the Russian merchant's dream ; and in , 
society enthusiasm fairly overflowed, for 
it delighted the Russian to see his Govern- 
ment outwit the diplomatists of England, 
hoodwink her press, and sow dissensions 
among her people. Truly the respect for 
parliamentary institutions is not likely to be : 
developed in Russia by the reflection of how ■ 
British statesmen were duped and their policy 
weakened by the scheming of the venerable- 
Chancellor. 

The war against Turkey will have brought 
Prince Gortschakoff 's fame to its climax, 
although the only Russians who are likely to 
profit by the ' chivalrous deliverance of the 
oppressed Christians ' will be the Tschinov- 
niks. It was for them that this war has 
been fought, and for them only. The wel- 
fare of the Russian people, which might have 
l>een served by military defeats, can only be 
retarded by victories, which, by making the 
( iovemment strong, will prolong the misrule 
for which it has been traditionally dis- 
tinguished. Russia victorious means the 
realization of Prince Gortsehakoff's ambition 
' to die leaving Russia as he found it ' — that 
is, a poor country for any but princes to live 
in. 

CHAPTER XXI I L 

TIIE CONQUESTS IX TURKESTAN. 

The Russian conquests in Turkestan have 
not only been the means of keeping the Gov- 
ernment supplied with the prestige requisite 
for despotic rulers ; they have enabled it to 



find occupation for the discontented spirits 
who might have got into mischief at home. 

The garrisons and the civil administration 
in the subject provinces are mostly recruited 
with men who have found their country too 
hot to hold them. The young boyard who 
has ruined himself at cards ; the tschinovnik- 
clerk who has made a mess of his accounts, 
but is too well connected to be sent to gaol ; 
the man with a troublesome grievance ; the 
officer of a crusty temper who cannot get on 
with his comrades ; the fashionable swindler ; 
the clever adventurer ; and, in fact, the men 
whose room society generally prefers to their 
company, are despatched to try their hands 
at humanizing the Uzbeks, Tadjiks, and 
Khirgiz-Kassaks. 

If they can get rich by screwing illicit 
taxes out of these bewildered tribes, so much 
the better ; if they be killed in border war- 
fare, nobody misses them ; but, anyhow, 
Government does its best to make their new 
start in life pleasant by sending them to their 
posts in showy uniforms covered with stars. 

It might sound queer to an Englishman to 
hear that an officer who had misappropriated 
regimental funds had been honored with a 
Companionship of the Bath and appointed 
Commissioner in India ; but something of 
this sort is done when a Russian good-for- 
nought is sent off to Samarcand with the 
orders of St. Anne and St. Wladimir on his 
breast. Glitter is the great point, and must 
be obtained without question as to the fitness 
of a functionary to wear decorations ; for the 
Uzbeks, who are sulky warriors, and the 
Khirgiz-Kassaks, who are superstitious 
hordes dwelling in tents and ever ready for 
some piece of devilry with their lances, and 
the Tadjiks, who, though a mild race, are 
cunning as foxes, must all be imposed upon 
by the pomp of their rulers. 

The Russians have forced upou these men 
a system of government which reads well on 
paper, but which to their primitive minds is 
full of preposterous anomalies which make 
them howl impotently. What, for instance, 
can the wild Uzbek know of a Court of Ap- 
peal ? In the old days he used to ride up to 
the office of the kazi, appointed for life by 
the Khan, and he got his justice cheap and 
ready. The kazi was not likely to cheat him, 
for he had no interest in doing so, besides his 
having Mussulman regard for the sanctity of 
the judicial function, and being honored of 
the people in proportion as he was independ- 
ent. But nowadays the kazis are old rogues 
elected by a number of other rogues called 
elders, who are all in Russian pay and have 
no object beyond currying favor with their 
conquerors. The Turcoman knows that these 
fellows wrong him ; but if he have a suit with 
a Russian he almost prefers being condemned 
straight off, for otherwise the Court of Ap- 
peal, before which his adversary drags him, 
burdens him with costs which oblige him to 
sell off the jewelled bridle of his horse and 
the silver stirrups which are the pride of his 
cavalcading race. 

Then the passport system, which has 
been introduced with all its Russian vexa- 
tiousuess and extortion of petty fees, sickens 
the soul of the Turcoman, who has been ac- 
customed to range free as the wolf. He can- 
not understand why he should be forced to 
carry about with him a sheet of paper which 
is always being declared irregular, and coin- 
pels him to put his hands into the ill-filled 
purse which hangs at his girdle. Add to t his 
the mystification of being rated for the repair 
of strategic roads which arc of no use to him, 
and the disgust at having to pay a tax on 
every commercial transaction, even the sell- 
ing of a colt or dog to a friend, and it will be 
seen that there is some policy in keeping the 
Turcoman overawed by the splendor of the 
garments of the men who grind him down. 
To the simple populations of Khokand, Bok- 
hara, and Khiva gold-laced coats and stars 
are symbols of a power too mighty to be 
trifled with ; and they are the more inclined 



to revere such things as they see Russian pri- 
vate soldiers look up to them with lavish 
worship. 

The story of the Russian advances in Turke- 
stan exhibits a grand mixture of daring and 
craft ; but so stubborn a display of conquer- 
ing qualities only proves the importance 
which was attached to securing the countries 
beyond which lies the great goal — India. 

It was in 1861 that operations regularly 
commenced, by the double raid of Colonel 
Verevkin upon Turkestan, and Colonel 
Tcherna'feff upon Tashkend. Tchernai'eff 's 
force amounted to 2,000 men and twelve 
field-pieces ; while the capital of Khokand, 
which is sixteen miles in circuit, and has a 
population of 100,000 souls, was defended by 
30,000 men, well armed and provided with 
artillery. But bribery had been at work in 
the city for years before the invading force 
came in sight ; and, though the Russians 
had to make a gallant fight of it against the 
masses who had not been bribed, it was cer- 
tainly gold and not steel which enabled them 
to take the town by surprise and win the vic- 
tory. 

Tashkend once captured, the Russians 
found themselves in collision with the Emir 
of Bokhara, who claimed a part of the 
khanate. The bloody battle of Irdjar iu 
I860 obliged the Emir to waive his preten- 
sions, and gave the two fairest provinces in 
Khokand to the invaders. But this was not 
all ; for two years later, the Bokhariots hav- 
ing raised their standard for a holy war, 
General Kaufmaun was sent with an expe- 
dition which captured Samarcand and the 
valley of Zarafshan, one of the most fertile in 
Central Asia. It was in this campaign that 
772 Russians, who had been left iu Samar- 
cand to guard 4."i0 wounded, defended them- 
selves for three days with amazing valor 
against 20,000 natives headed by the Bey of 
Sherisal. Kaufmaun arrived with rein- 
forcements just in time to save them ; but 
there was something very suspicious in the 
suddenness with which the Bokhariots de- 
camped at sight of the Russian general, as 
well as in some later circumstances of the 
war which seemed to show that the Emir had 
been ' got at. ' 

At any rate he was content to accept the 
Russian yoke in consideration of being- 
allowed to retain a nominal kingship ; and in 
1872, during the Khivan campaign, he did 
his former foes the service of keeping their 
communications with Russia open. 

The Khivan campaign could never have 
succeeded but for this accommodating Emir, 
and it was something pitiful to see the un- 
fortunate Bokhariots, who loathe the Rus- 
sians, deluded by the fables of their corrupt 
chief into working as allies for the oppressors 
whom they had then a fine opportunity of 
crushing. 

Two Russian corps d'armee, lost in the des- 
ert, had been obliged to retrace their steps ; 
the third, under General Kaufmaun, was 
also on the point of perishing of privations, 
but the timely succor of the Bokhariots saved 
them, and settled the fate of the Khan of 
Khiva, who was forced to surrender a part 
of his dominions to his brother-potentate of 
Bokhara, and to accept Russian protectorate 
for the remainder. 

It will be remembered that Count Schou- 
valoff had given the British Government an 
assurance that Khiva should not be annexed, 
and it is in part fulfilment of this promise 
that the Khan of Khiva has not yet been 
allowed tc commute his sovereignly for a 
pension, as he desires to do, finding his posi- 
tion among his disgusted subjects somewhat 
precarious. Perhaps, now that (he Turkish 
war has ended so well, arrangements may be 
made to humor his wishes. Meanwhile it 
must be noted that Russian encroachments 
did not end with the war in Khiva, for in 
March, 1870, the Khokandians, having 
grown tired of the civilization presented to 
them under the guise of courts of appeal, 



24 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



passports, and taxes upon barter, deposed 
their spiritless Khan, and rose in a formidable 
insurrection, which, being crushed, left them 
poorer than before. Russia proceeded to 
annex the whole principality, thereby gain- 
ing a hundred square leagues of soil more 
fruitful than any in Russia; but as a drawback 
it is obliged to maintain a garrison of 50,000 
men in this one province, so inimical to 
civilization. 

A glance at the map will show what giant 
strides the aforesaid conquests have enabled 
the Holy Empire to make in the direction of 
India ; but one conquest makes another im- 
perative, and the Russians have seen for 
some time that they will be obliged to try 
conclusions with the Khan of Kashgar. This 
chief, Yakoub Beg by name and a Khokan- 
dian by birth, has been up to the present an 
ally of England, and he is an able man, who 
has succeeded in keeping up an army of 40,- 
000 men, wonderfully well disciplined, and 
in establishing gun foundries and manu- 
factures of small arms. If left to himself he 
would make of Kashgar a powerful State ; 
but the Russians have incited the Chinese 
against him, and he and the Celestials are 
probably busy fighting at this hour. Should 
Yakoub Beg be victorious, he has energy 
enough in him to rouse all the Mussulman 
population in Tashkend, Khokand, and 
Samarcand to rebellion ; should he be beaten, 
or should Russia by other influences bring 
him over to her side, the southernmost pro- 
vince of Turkestan will lie at the mercy of 
England's worst enemy, and there will re- 
main but a small stretch of undefended terri- 
tory to cross before reaching the Indian 
frontier. 

We have given here but a bird's-eye view 
of the Russian conquests in Central Asia. 
Some of the political and social features of 
those conquests require fuller notice. 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE TRIBES IN TURKESTAN. 

The chief strength of the Russian Govern- 
ment lies in its having no Parliament to con- 
trol its expenditure. It can bestow immense 
sums in secret service, and buy up Asiatic 
chiefs as fast as it wants them. It can also buy 
up foreign -journalists who will persuade the 
world that it buys nobody. 

Since the demise of the East India Com- 
pany, Great Britain has labored under a dis- 
tinct disadvantage in this respect. Its Gov- 
ernment no longer bribes, and must depend 
for its prestige in the East on military might 
only. Now the quelling of the Indian 
Mutiny did beyond doubt cover British arms 
with a glory which made every Rajah and 
Khan, from Astrakan to Ceylon, blink with 
a wholesome respect, and the subsequent 
Abyssinian campaign did much to confirm 
the notion that when Eastern potentates 
come to blows with the British Government 
they do somehow get terribly the worst of it. 
There is not a chief in Turkestan but knows 
how Delhi fell and how Magdala was 
stormed ; and when the British name is men- 
tioned in the bazaars of Tashkend and 
Samarcand the fierce valor of the ' red 
soldiery ' is recalled too in cautious terms. 

But Russia also has its military fame ; and 
when gold is used to back it, when chiefs 
are bought and humbler Asiatics dazzled, op- 
pressed, and hoaxed with fables as to British 
decadence, it becomes a question with them 
whether after all Russia is not the stronger of 
the two Powers. If she be not, why does 
England allow her to extend her domination 
over tribes who were not unfriendly to Brit- 
ish rule ? Why is she suffered to bully Per- 
sia and spoil Turkey? Why does every 
Russian brag of the coming time when the 
standard of his Czar shall float over Cal- 
cutta V 

These are questions which cannot be satis- 
factorily answered for the understanding of 
a Bokhariot or Khivan. The sly elders and 
warriors of Turkestan know what Russia is 



doing, within India as well as without, by 
fomenting disaffection among native princes ; 
and it seems to them that the proper time for 
withstanding so dangerous an enemy is the 
time when she is still struggling towards the 
boundary line — not when she shall be actually 
on the frontier with huge hosts, communica- 
tions assured, and allies inside the country, 
whose mutiny must cause the final struggle 
for supremacy to assume gigantic propor- 
tions. Add to all this that the Russians, 
while behaving cruelly and insolently towards 
the masses in their subject provinces, know 
how to make themselves popular with men 
of influence by a display of qualities and 
vices more congenial to the Asiatic mind 
than the formalism of the English. 

British policy in the East tends to protect 
the people against the malpractices of their 
native rulers ; the policy of Russia is just the 
reverse, for it gives carte blanche to the chiefs 
so long as they remain loyal to their con- 
querors. The British official in India is gen- 
erally speaking a gentleman — upright, just, 
and decorous, but not genial. Having to be 
on his guard against trickery, he is often 
cold and blunt ; and, being pretty strict in 
his morals and addicted to religious observ- 
ances, he is apt to seem a great deal t oo virtu- 
ous to the rajahs, whom he neither corrupts 
nor will suffer to corrupt him. 

The Russian, who is half a barbarian at 
home, gives free rein to his licentiousness in 
Asia, and is swift to adopt all Mussulman 
customs, even to the harem. The Governors 
of Samarcand and Taschkend surround 
themselves with a pomp which is not only 
confined to State ceremonials, but royalizes 
their luxurious mode of living in private ; 
and as their inferiors imitate them, the least 
official sets up as a petty satrap, with droves 
of natives to fetch and carry for him, and 
troops of dancing girls to amuse him while 
he lounges on an ottoman and drinks. It 
may not please the Turkestaner to watch 
these goings on. It may exasperate him to 
see the swaggering foreigners make free with 
the daughters of his tribes, and throw his 
chiefs into merry madness with the ' heavenly 
sherbet ' (as champagne is called out there) ; 
but if these and the worse hardships of ex- 
tortion and injustice drive him to rebellion, 
he is always betrayed by his leaders ; and 
after a brief fight, followed by a drastic mas- 
sacre, he finds the wooden yoke on his neck 
turned to iron, and the whips that flayed him 
changed to scorpions. 

The tribes of Turkestan might long ago 
have got rid of the Russians if they had been 
united, and if their chiefs had played them 
fair. It has lately been reported that Khu- 
dayar, the ex-Khan of Khokand, who was 
deposed in 187G, has fled from Orenburg, 
where he was residing as a pensioner of Rus- 
sia ; and it is hinted that his machinations 
may shortly lead to a new uprising of his 
countrymen. Perhaps ; but then Khudayar 
is the same against whom the Khokandians 
revolted last year because of his servility 
towards the Russians. He is a wily old fel- 
low who has been intriguing, warring, and 
trimming turn-about for thirty years ; and if 
the Khirgiz should again put faith in him they 
will certainly rue it. 

The story of these insurrections is always 
the same. When the ringleaders are ready 
they stir up the dervishes to go and yell in a 
village against the last act of savagery or ra- 
pine committed by some Russian underling. 
Howling mobs are immediately collected. 
The small company of soldiers guarding the 
village are slaughtered ; bands of fanatics 
are formed, who bind themselves by a fright- 
ful oath to slay each their ten or twenty 
Christians ; and the Khirgiz, galloping on 
their fleet horses from village to village, 
make the sedition spread like the flames of a 
prairie fire. Within a couple of days hun- 
dreds of these hamlets, which even in times 
of peace look like camps, because of their 
tent-shaped huts and the weapons which the | 



villagers carry, are up in arms, and the Rus- 
sians have to begin a hand-to-hand fight for i 
life, blood being poured out like water, and 
each side butchering without mercy. 

This may go on for weeks, and more Rus- > 
sians are slain than are ever counted in the 
official gazettes of St. Petersburg ; but sud- 
denly all this blaze, which began like the 
burning of a city, goes out tamely as a straw 
fire. Some chiefs have committed treason. 
They waited till they had given proof of 
their power and forced their foes to offer them 
prodigal bribes, then they sold themselves, i 
and led their followers into some ambush, 
where the miserable wretches were extermi- 
nated like flies. The treacherous chiefs are 
seen soon afterwards robed in the red velvet 
dressing-gowns which are bestowed as marks 
of honor upon loyal native dignitaries ; they 
carouse with their whilom foes, and peace 
continues until some other chiefs, ambitious . 
of red velvet and champagne, begin the old 
game over again. 

The fault of the peoples of Turkestan is 
that they are all too credulous as regards the 
leaders of their own respective tribes, and 
too suspicious of the others, so that if perad- 
venture one honest man keeps the field after 
others have consummated their treachery, 
none but his own tribe will give him credit for 
sincerity, and the rest slink home, leaving 
him to capitulate against overpowering odds 
and to be hanged. Khudayar of Khokand 
had more than once authority enough to 
have led the whole of Turkestan to emancipa- ' 
tion if he had not had such an itching palm; 
but Yakoub Beg of Kashgar is now prob- j 
ably the only Khan under whose banner all 
the tribes w T ould fight with perfect and en- 
during trust. These tribes are many, but 
the Tadjiks, the Uzbeks, and the Khirgiz 
may be taken as the three typical varieties of 
the country, and they have differences of 
character which make it difficult to work 
together unless they be led by a man of ex- 
ceptional stamp. 

The Tadjiks are descendants of the old 
Aryan race who first peopled Central Asia. 
They are fine men to look at, tall, well knit, 
not too dark, with large bright eyes full of 
shrewdness, and soft civil manners ; unfor- 
tunately, having long lived in subjection to 
the Uzbeks, they have lost their martial spirit 
and acquired the vices of slaves. They thrive 
capitally as tradesmen, they make good clerks ; 
and mechanics ; but they are frivolous, brag- 
gaits, cowards, and liars, so that in every 
insurrection they are the first to backslide. 

The Uzbeks are of Turkish origin, and , 
form an aristocratic caste, each tribe having 
its customs and traditions, and paying the 
same allegiance to its head as Scottish clans- 
men used to do. These men are warriors ; 
thin of face, gaunt, and simple in their hab- i 
its ; they have adhered to their own tongue, 
while the Tadjiks talk a bastard Persian, and 1 
they are much less easy to corrupt than any 
of the other races, for they despise effemi- 
nate luxuries. If one of them turns traitor 
it is generally because he has a grudge against 
some other chief. 

The Khirgiz, who occupy a great part of 
Khokand, are divided into two races — the 
Kara- Khirgiz, who are mountaineers, with 
a tendency towards banditism, and the I 
Khirgiz-Kassaks, who live in the plains, and 
would be the most prosperous people in Cen- 
tral Asia if their innate cleverness were not 
overlaid with the crassest superstition. They 
cany mutton-bones about with them to 
ward off the Evil One. If a Khirgiz has a . i 
singing in his ears down he goes on his knees 
to pray, thinking that one of his friends is 
going to die ; if you whistle in his presence 
he imagines you have designs upon his wife, I 
and must be appeased with gifts and incanta- I 
tions ; if one of his children yawns he is per- 
suaded that a wicked spirit has dived down 
the child's throat to cut out a piece of its 
heart, and he falls to cuffing the poor brat to j 
make him wary of gaping in future. The 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



25 



Khirgiz have all the Mongolian facial type, 
which comes of their affection for Kalmuck 
wives, whom until recently they were in the 
habit of carrying off by " main force from 
Chinese territory. 

It used to be thought derogatory to a 
Khirgiz to marry any woman but one whom 
'he had carried off in a raid, and a relic of 
this practice survives in some very singular 
marriage customs. When a Khirgiz wants 
.i wife he buys her of her parents for so 
many camels or horses, and on the wedding 
day the young lady is turned loose upon a 
pony and" armed with a heavy kourbatch, or 
ox-nerve riding-whip, and her bridegroom is 
supposed to carry her off against her will, 
and for this purpose posts after her with a 
troop of friends, all being mounted. The 
bride defends herself with the kourbatch, and 
slashes the faces of the friends pretty : 
vigorously, but the bridegroom gets oft 
cheap, and, after a sham struggle, bears back 
the young lady on his saddle amid the tri- ] 
um pliant shouts of his village. 

The Khirgiz live in peaked huts, made of 
felt, like tents, and take great pride in hav- 
ing their horses richly caparisoned, their | 
bridles being often encrusted with jewels. 
They are also very particular about their \ 
own" dress, which consists of leather trousers, i 
a black velvet dressing-gown, more or less 
braided with sold, and a conical felt hat with 
curly brim. When a Khirgiz can win the red 
velvet gown given by the Russians he is 
mighty proud of it, though his loyalty to the 
bestowers has to be kept alive by continual 
gifts. As the Russians cannot be forever giv- 
ing, they prefer to persecute all but the more 
influential Khirgiz, and their cupidity finds 
free scope among those jewelled bridles 
already mentioned. 

It is through the Khirgiz that political 
rumors are chiefly disseminated in Turkestan, 
for they have an Athenian fondness for re- 
ports of all kinds, and are simple enough to 
swallow any fable. When one of them gets 
hold of any piece of news he takes no rest till 
he has scattered it to the four points of the 
compass, and will ride about all day to do 
this, leaving his business to take care of it- 
self. The Khirgiz are great breeders of silk- 
worms, camels, and horses, and manufacture 
felt, silk, and ornaments of gold as dexter- 
ously as the Chinese. Russia has not done 
anything to promote their industry, but has 
rather balked it by her excessive taxes on 
trade, aud the lot of the people under their 
civilizing conquerors may be said to be infi- 
nitely worse than it was in the days when 
they were free to mind their own business 
in their own primitive ways. 

For a fuller account of the doings of Rus- 
sia in Asia, and of their menacing purport 
towards England, one must refer the reader 
to Arminius Yambery's excellent and ex- 
haustive work, ' Central Asia and the Anglo-. 
Indian Frontier Question. ' It has been ably 
translated into English by Mr. F. E. Bunnet. 

CHAPTER XXV. 

SIBERIA. — ON THE ROAD. 

Capital punishment has been abolished 
in Russia, that foreigners might no more be 
able to call the Czar's subjects a barbarous 
people ; and instead of it the process of doing 
offender- slowly to death in Siberia has been 
advantageously substituted. 

A Russian may be sent to Siberia by sen- 
tence of the courts or by an Imperial decree 
issued through the Police Ministry ; in the 
latter case he is said to be ' awaiting the 
Czar's pleasure,' and no publicity is given to 
his fate. His friends may inquire for him in 
vain. He has been privately arrested ; he 
has disappeared ; but whether he be lying in 
some gaol awaiting trial, or have been spirited 
away to the quicksilver mines beyond Lake 
Baikal, there is nothing to show unless some 
police official, taking pity on the grief of a 
bereaved wife, tells her to hope in the Czar's 



clemency, which is just as though he in- 
formed her that she was a widow. What 
shocks one in all this is not the despotism that 
stamps out an enemy by a ruthless process, 
but the canting pretence of humanity which 
confronts one at every step in Russia, and 
would lead strangers to believe that these in- 
iquities are obsolete. 

Russians assure strangers that arbitrary 
transportations ceased long ago, but they 
confess the contrary when you have known 
them long enough to get the truth from them. 
Then it appears that almost every man of 
note can emote a case in which some person 
was transported by decree for mysterious rea- 
sons. The excuse offered is always that there 
are crimes which would cause too much 
scandal if made public ; but Government 
never recoils from the scandal of bringing 
Nihilist conspirators to trial, even when 
ladies of rank and generals are implicated. 
The truth seems to be that when a Russian 
commits an offence which the law courts are 
sure to punish he is arraigned in the regular 
way ; but if he has rendered himself offen- 
sive in high quarters without having laid him- 
self open to any specific charge, he is sent to 
Siberia quietly. 

It is said that almost all the persons who 
are transported to Siberia, with or without 
trial, admit the justice of their punishment. 
This is very likely ; for their only chance of 
getting pardoned or of being allowed to com- 
municate with their friends lies in their mak- 
ing a full and penitent acknowledgment of 
their guilt on paper. One hears nothing of 
the captives who refuse to do this. They 
pay the penalty of their high-spiritedncss by 
never being allowed a chance of letting the 
world know that they have suffered unjustly. 

Siberia is a territory covering about six 
times the area of England and Scotland. It 
contains a great number of penal colonies 
scattered at long distances from one another, 
and differing much in the degrees of discom- 
fort they offer to their inhabitants. The 
colonists are divided into three categories — 
those who live at their own expense and are 
allowed to have their families with them ; 
those who are supported by Government, but 
are suffered to eke out their small pittance by 
acting as servants to the richer colonists or 
working at trades ; and, thirdly, those who 
are employed at hard labor on public works 
or in the mines. 

The miners are supposed to be the worst 
offenders, and their punishment is tanta- 
mount to death by slow torture, for it is cer- 
tain to kill them in ten years and ruins their 
health long before that time. A convict 
never knows until he reaches Siberia what 
sort of life is in store for him ; for in pro- 
nouncing sentence of hard labor the judge 
makes no mention of mines. If the convict 
have money or influential friends he had bet- 
ter use the time between his sentence and 
transportation in buying a warrant which 
consigns him to the lighter kinds of labor 
above ground ; otherwise he will inevitably 
be sent under earth and never again see the 
sky until he is hauled up to die in an in- 
firmary. 

The convicts are forwarded to Siberia in 
convoys, which start at the commencement 
of spring, just after the snows have melted 
and left the ground dry. They perform the 
whole journey on foot, escorted by mounted 
Cossacks, who are aimed with pistols, lances, 
and long whips ; and behind them jolt a long 
string of springless tumbrils to carry those 
who fall lame or ill on the way. The start 
is always made in the night, aud care is taken 
that the convoys shall only pass through the 
towns on their road after dark. Each man is 
dressed in a gray caftan, having a brass num- 
bered plate fastened to the breast, knee boots, 
and a sheepskin bonnet. He carries a rug 
strapped to his back, a mess-tin and a wooden 
spoon at his girdle. The women have black 
cloaks with hoods, and march in gangs by 
themselves, with an escort of soldiers, like 



the men, and two or three female warders, 
who travel in carts. 

In leaving large cities, like St. Petersburg, 
all the prisoners are chained with their hands 
behind their backs, but their fetters are re- 
moved outside the city, except in the case of 
men who have been marked as dangerous. 
These have to wear leg chains of 4 lb. weight 
all the way, and some of the more desperate 
ones are yoked by threes to a beam of wood, 
which rests on their shoulders, and is fastened 
to their necks by iron collars. 

Any foreigner who has been at St. Peters- 
burg during the spring, and has chanced to 
come home late from one of the Easter balls, 
may have met one of these dismal proces- 
sions filing through the broad streets at a 
quick march. Nobody may approach the 
men to inspect them. The Cossacks crack 
their whips loudly to warn loafers off, and 
scamper up and down the line with lanterns 
tied to their lance-points, which they lower 
to the ground at every moment to see if let- 
ters have been dropped. Murderers, thieves, 
Nihilist conspirators, felon clergymen, muti- 
nous soldiers, and patriotic Poles all tramp 
together as fast as they can go, and perfectly 
silent. Then come the women, shivering, 
sobbing, but not daring to cry out, because 
of those awful whips. There are sure to be 
some young girls among them — ex-students 
of Zurich, convicted of "Nihilism, or Polish 
girls accused of hatching plots — and these 
are mixed up elbow to elbow with hardened 
adventuresses, sentenced for bank-note for- 
geries, and with flat-faced Muscovite drabs 
who have killed a husband or child under the 
influence of vodki. 

At the first church outside the city there is 
a halt, and the two gangs are driven into the 
building to attend a parting mass and hear 
a short sermon. The preacher, speaking 
from the altar, never fails to extol the Czar's 
clemency, and to advise submission and pen- 
itence. The girls, the Poles, the alleged con- 
spirators here get a foretaste of the language 
that will be held to them every time they 
make an appeal for mercy. When the 
prisoners leave the church their chains are re- 
moved, and they receive permission to talk for 
the rest of the way, except when they pass 
through towns. They may sing, too, if they 
like, and sometimes do, trying to drown 
their misery in plaintive yells about the 
homes they shall never see again. 

Meanwhile a rumor has somehow got 
abroad that a convict convoy is on the move, 
and in all the villages the compassionate 
peasantry bring out steaming tureens of 
tschi, piles of newly baked bread, and jugs 
of kwass or vodki. They set these offerings 
by the roadside as the vanguard of the con- 
voy comes in sight, and then retire, for they 
must not speak to the prisoners. 

The pity felt for Siberian exiles is uni- 
versal, and is only too natural in a country 
where it is by no means the worst rogues 
who habitually come to punishment. A vil- 
lager will bring out his last crust to feed one 
of the poor wretches whom he pathetically 
mentions as having been ' unfortunate, ' and 
even the Cossack guards show a rough sort 
of sympathy for their charges. They allow 
them to take freely of whatever is put out 
for them, and only make use of their whips 
in cases of insubordination. Unfortunately, 
the delirium of fever is often taken for in- 
subordination ; so that a delicately nurtured 
convict, man or woman, whose intellect 
gives way under the fatigues of the march and 
the horrors of impending slavery, is liable to 
be stripped and brutally flogged as an exam- 
ple to the rest. 

The rations served out to the prisoners aro 
biscuit and salt beef, and they must drink 
when they find water, which at some periods 
of the march, when crossing the immense 
steppes, is hardly to be got. At night the 
convoys bivouac in pine forests, on the out- 
skirts of villages, or on the steppes aforesaid. 
They have nothing to guard them against 



20 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



rains or capricious spring frosts but their 
rugs and clothes. Numbers die on the road, 
and are buried in the steppes by fatigue par- 
ties who are told off to dig their graves. The 
march from St. Petersburg to the Ourals takes 
six weeks at the least, and many of the con- 
victs have to trudge on for weeks more after 
crossing the mountains before they reach 
their ultimate destination. Long before the 
Siberian frontier is attained the paucity of 
human habitations, the barrenness of the 
soil, and the increasing bleakness of the cli- 
mate have had their effect on the hardiest ; 
and the poor wretches plod on with a settled 
look of terror on their faces and all desire for 
conversation gone out of them. 

A correspondent writing to the Pall Mall 
Gazette lately called attention to another 
method of conveying prisoners to Siberia — a 
method chiefly used for prisoners from Cen- 
tral and Southern Russia. He says : — ' I 
have seen in the middle of the day 500 men 
of all ages, in ranks of four, chained together, 
marched through the fair at Nijni Novgorod, 
and followed by the women and children on 
foot, only the sick and disabled being in the 
country carts which brought up the rear. 
Business on the " Birsja" was hushed as the 
procession passed, and only compassionate 
remarks were heard as to their sad fate. 
They were locked up in the citadel, and on 
the Saturday morning as many as could be 
stowed into a 1,000-ton barge were put on 
board. On the deck of the barge there is 
erected a cage 6 feet high or thereabouts, ex- 
actly like a hen-coop, only the wires are iron 
bars ; and here the prisoners are permitted to 
take air. The warders and guards live in 
wooden houses built at either end of the 
cage, and keep a sharp look-out on the pris- 
oners. A steamer takes the barge in tow 
down the Volga and up the Kama river to 
Perm, where the land journey to their desti- 
nation commences. For t wo or three months 
at least detachments of prisoners were sent 
off once a fortnight ; probably it goes on 
during the whole time of the navigation. It 
is a very distressing sight to see a large body 
of prisoners. Notwithstanding the uniform 
gray dress and their closely cropped heads, 
the differences in physiognomy came promi- 
nently out, and one can distinguish those 
who have mixed in good society and may be 
there for some trivial misdemeanor from 
those who, from their ferocious, forbidding 
aspect, have given the rein to their evil pas- 
sions and are undergoing their just punish- 
ment. ' 

All exiles do not travel to Siberia in con- 
voys. If a prisoner be well off and have not 
incurred the special animosity of a tschinov- 
nik anxious to avenge himself by heaping up 
hardships which may hurry him out of life, 
a judicious amount of bribing may procure 
him the privilege of travelling at his own 
expense. In this event he is allowed to take 
his wife with him, and as much furniture 
and luggage as he can afford, also servants, 
if he can find any devoted enough to follow 
him. But he must also pay for his escort of 
guards, never less than five, including an 
officer, and sometimes twice that number. 

Exiles of this sort, who are occasionally to 
be met with on the steppes, travelling with 
carts full of their goods, look as if they were 
tourists going on a pleasure party. The 
women always try to make the best of it, and 
it may be remarked that nothing is more ad- 
mirable in Russian women than their readi- 
ness to follow their husbands to Siberia when 
they can obtain leave. Women who have 
moved in fashionable life, and who have not 
seemed to be particularly affectionate wives, 
often become transformed by the stroke of 
misfortune, and bravely confront a fate whose 
miseries cannot be unknown to them. Those 
who refuse to accompany their husbands are 
the exception, and their lot is not enviable, 
for society closes its doors on them. A Sibe- 
rian exile is accounted civilly dead, his wife 
may claim a divorce and remarry, but in the 



few cases when this has been done it has gen- 
erally been suspected that the wife had the 
chief hand in her husband's transportation. 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

SIBERIA : THE FREE COLONIES AND MINES. 

The Siberian convicts of the richer sort, 
who are allowed to maintain themselves, live 
in villages whose male population never ex- 
ceeds 200 souls. The colonies are scattered 
at least twenty versts apart, and each is 
guarded by a company of forty soldiers and 
three officers. 

The commander holds lieutenant-colonel's 
rank and governs the colony, administering 
martial law with his two subalterns. In the 
event of a murder, or an attempt at rebellion, 
he despatches a Cossack to a neighboring 
village to fetch a couple of other officers, and 
so composes a court of five, who have power 
of life and death. No communication is 
allowed between the exiles of different colo- 
nies, and if two brothers or a father and son 
are transported together they are always 
placed apart. The dwellings vary in size 
and in comfort. Some, built at the expense of 
aristocrats in trouble, are decent villas well 
furnished ; others are mere huts, whose prin- 
cipal furniture is a big stove. 

In those terrible regions beyond Tomsk, and 
still farther beyond the Jenissa, winter pre- 
vails during nine months of the year, and for 
twelve weeks of that time the days are scarcely 
six hours long. The colonists organize even- 
ing parties and drinking bouts, in which 
the officers and the village popes often join. 
All these functionaries are men who have got 
into some disgrace themselves, and the pri- 
vate soldiers are the refuse of the army, who 
have been sent to Siberia as a punishment. 
This fact does not give the colonists a better 
chance of mutiny or escape, for a command- 
er who allows an exile to slip from his cus- 
tody is consigned to penal servitude in the 
mines. He also risks being degraded to the 
ranks if he suffers a convict to send off a 
clandestine letter, and for this reason the 
strictest watch is kept on the caravans of 
Jews who come once or twice a year to bring 
goods for sale. 

The arrival of these caravans affords a hol- 
iday-time to the wretched colonists. For a 
day or two the villages are converted into 
fairs, and those who have money lay in a six 
months' provision of garments, books, and 
luxuries of the table. The Jews do not ob- 
ject to acting as postmen if well paid, and, 
possibly, a governor will often connive for a 
good bribe ; but if an exile is detected in 
passing out a letter without having previous- 
ly corrupted the governor, he gets flogged. 
Women are flogged as well as men ; and if a 
wife who has come into voluntary exile for 
her husband's sake commits an offence, she 
has to choose between being whipped or 
being sent back to her country and never 
seeing her husband again. 

Corporal punishment is the chief method 
of discipline in Siberia. In the mines, in the 
gangs working on the roads, a saucy word is 
enough to bring blows ; but in the well-to- 
do colonies exiles are doubtless exempt from 
harsh usage so long as they have money. 
The governors are not bad fellows, though 
drunkards to a man, and it is their interest to 
keep on good terms with their charges. They 
suffer the latter to roam within a radius of 
five versts from their villages, and to kill 
time according to their fancy. Twice a year 
an inspector-general goes the round of the 
colonies to collect reports and bring pardons ; 
and then the governors have the privilege of 
recommending to the Czar's clemency exiles 
who have committed acts of courage in sav- 
ing life or helping to quell mutinies. Unfor- 
tunately, such recommendations are seldom 
listened to, because it is notorious that gov- 
ernors have often invented acts of courage 
for a pecuniary consideration. 

There comes a fearful time in the fives of 
the exiles who have their families with them. 



Their sons grow up and must go away to serve 
in the army ; their daughters, at the age of 
twenty, have to choose between returning to 
Russia or marrying an exile and remaining 
settled in Siberia. Once the sons and daugh- 
ters have gone their parents see no morcTof' 
them ; but, cruel as this separation is, many 
parents prefer it to allowing their children to 
linger all their lives in the wastes where they 
themselves have suffered so much. 

Sometimes a young exile falls in love with 
the daughter of a fellow-colonist, and then 
there is a dismal romance, for it depends on 
the governor whether leave shall be granted 
for a marriage, and this functionary, acting 
on orders from headquarters, may refuse. 
It has happened, again, that a female exile 
has been courted, and has obtained her par- 
don just after she had sent in her application 
for permission to marry. Her entreaties to be 
allowed to stay and share her lover's fate are of 
no avail, for a pardon is often more of an act 
of ostentation than of mercy, and the recipi- 
ent must accept it in order that the inhabit- 
ants of the Russian town appointed for his 
or her residence may have the opportunity of 
admiring a living example of Imperial clem- 
ency. 

Pardons are seldom granted to exiles who 
have been more than ten years in Siberia, for 
they would have too much to relate on their 
return. They are generally conceded at the 
end of two or three years ; and it has now 
and then happened that an exile has found a 
pardon awaiting him on his arrival in the 
colony. This has served to feed the popular 
notion, often retailed to foreigners, that un- 
less a man has committed some heinous 
offence he is sure to be pardoned, the truth 
being that pardons have very little to do with 
the nature of an offence, but are bestowed 
out of pure caprice. A rogue having influ- 
ential friends may get one at once, and an- 
other who has committed a peccadillo, 
atoned for by years of good conduct, may 
exhaust appeals for mercy in vain. 

The discharged exiles leave Siberia in car- 
avans during the summer, and each receive:; 
orders to go and reside in some inland town 
or village, where he remains under police 
surveillance. His lot here is that of a leper, 
for the inhabitants are afraid to speak to him 
lest they should compromise themselves. He 
is forbidden to exercise any profession ; he 
cannot trade, for the merchants will not 
admit him to their guilds ; and were he to 
write the police would make sure that he 
was going to publish his Siberian experi- 
ences, and would seize his papers. If he 
have no private means the Government allow 
him the pay and rations of a common soldier, 
and he must contrive to live on that, beguil- 
ing his time as he can. It depends on his 
loyalty, and, above all, on his reticence of 
tongue, whether, after a few years of proba- 
tion, he shall be permitted to return to his 
former home ; but he never gets leave to 
live in St. Petersburg, Moscow, or Odessa 
unless he joins the Crown service as a police 

spy- 

The exiles who live in the mines are con- 
victs of the worst type and political offenders 
of the best. The murderer for his villain}', 
the intelligent and honest Polish rebel for his 
patriotism, are deemed equally worthy of the 
punishment of slow death. They never see 
the light of day, but work and sleep all the 
year round in the depths of the earth, ex- 
tracting silver or quicksilver under the eyes 
of taskmasters who have orders not to spare 
them. Iron gates guarded by sentries close 
the lodes, or streets, at the bottom of the 
shafts, and the miners are railed off from one 
another in gangs of twenty. They sleep 
within recesses hewn out of the rock — very 
kennels — into which they must creep on all- 
fours. 

Prince Joseph Lubomirski, who was au- 
thorized to visit one of the mines in the dis- 
trict beyond Lake Baikal at a time when it 
was not suspected he would ever Dublish : -.n 



I account of his exploration in French, has 
I given an appalling- account of what he saw. 
I Convicts nicked with the joint pains which 
; quicksilver produces ; men whose hair and 
eyebrows had dropped off, and who were 
gaunt as skeletons, were kept to hard labor 
under the lash. They have only two holidays 
a year, Christmas and Easter ; all the other 
days, Sundays included, they must toil until 
exhausted nature robs them of the use of 
their limbs, when they are hauled up to die 
in the infirmary. Five years in the quick- 
silver pits are enough to turn a man of thirty 
into an apparent sexagenarian, but some have 
been known to struggle on for ten years. 

No man who has served in the mines is 
ever allowed to return home ; the most he 
can obtain in the way of grace is leave to 
come up and work in the road gangs, and it 
is the promise of this favor as a reward for 
industry which operates even more than the 
lash to maintain discipline. 

Women are employed in the mines as sift- 
ers, .and get no better treatment than the 
men. Polish ladies by the dozen have been 
sent down to rot and die, while the St. Peters- 
burg journals were declaring that they were 
living as free colonists ; and more recently 
ladies connected with Nihilist conspiracies 
have been consigned to the mines in pursu- 
ance of a sentence of hard labor. It must 
always be understood that a sentence of Si- 
berian hard labor means death. 

The Russian Government well knows that 
to live for years in the atrocious tortures of | 
the mines is humanly impossible, and, con- [ 
sequently, the use of an euphemism to re- 
place the term capital punishment is merely [ 
of a piece with the hypocrisy of all official 
statements in Russia. 

Once a week a pope, himself an exile, goes 
down into the mines to bear the consolations 
of religion, under the form of a sermon en- ! 
joining patience. By the same occasion he i 
drives a little trade in vodki. The miners, 
who live habitually on tschi and black bread, 
are allowed a kopeck for a good day's work ; 
and this sum invariably goes in drink. Pcr- 
baps the raw, rancid spirit serves to keep up 
their strength ; anyhow, the intoxication it 
brings on affords the unfortunates the only 
dreg of comfort they can expect on this 
earth. 

One shudders to think of the state of the 
better educated men who refuse the consola- 
tion of occasionally drowning their sorrows 
in liquor. What must be the plight of pro- 
fessors, journalists, landowners, who have 
been condemned to die by inches for the 
crime of emitting Liberal opinions, which in 
England bring a man to great honor and 
comfort on every side ? Perhaps those Eng- 
lish Liberals who feel kindly towards Russian 
hiimanitarianism would pick up a notion or 
two if they could interview some of their Mus- 
covite colleagues earning the reward for their- 
p regressive theories underground, with a 
drunken priest to whine them homilies. 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

CIIAIUTIES. 

Every Russian charity is an incomplete 
copy of something French or German. 

L'nder Nicholas, if a foreign philanthro- 
pist was presented to the Czar their conver- 
sation was sure to bear fruit in the shape of 
an order for building some new hospital or 
asylum on a gigantic scale. Architects went 
to work, the Finance Minister groaned at 
having to pay so much money for a caprice, 
and the institution when founded generally 
did but little of the good that was expected 
of it ; but the Emperor was satisfied, and 
that was enough. 

The Foundling Hospital at Moscow offers 
a good example of the ostentation of Russian 
charity and of the abuses which are begotten 
by ill-management. The place, which covers 
as much ground as a village, contains 1,700 
wet-nurses and 2,000 babies. 

Fifty childreu are admitted daily on mere 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 

! presentation at the gate, no questions being 
asked. After having been washed, dressed, 
and ticketed, each child is consigned to a 
nurse, and remains in the hospital from three 
to six months, after which it is boarded out, 
its foster-mother receiving 8s. a month for 
five years. At the expiration of this time 
the board is reduced, and the nurse must 
contract to keep the child for one rouble a 
month till it shall be able to earn its own liv- 
ing ; or else the little creature is transferred 
to an industrial school. The boys are trained 
as soldiers or mechanics, the girls as domes- 
tic servants ; and the number of these young 
people whom the Foundling annually sup- 
ports exceeds 30.000. 

There is something grandiose in this char- 
ity, and although the mortality in the hospi- 
tal is very large, owing to bad ventilation 
and unskilful medical attendance, all the 
show part of its arrangement is very strik- 
ing. 

Unfortunately, this famous foundling ref- 
uge has corrupted all the villages round 
Moscow. Peasant girls who have forgotten 
to get married send their babies to the insti- 
tution, then offer themselves in person as 
wet-nurses. Having tattooed their offspring, 
each mother contrives to find her own, and 
takes charge of it by private arrangement 
with the nurse to whom it has been assigned. 
As babies are so much alike the authorities 
cannot detect these interchanges, and do not 
attempt to do so. In due time the mother 
returns to her village with her own baby, 
whose board will be paid for by the State at 
the rate of 8s. a month, as above said ; and 
possibly next year and the year after she will 
begin the same game over again. 

Thus a fine premium is placed on immoral- 
ity and fraud. The authorities know this ; 
they joke about the Foundling Hospital 
among themselves ; but Government persists 
in keeping up the institution in its unre- 
formed state for the bewildering of foreign- 
ers. It is not in every country that one can 
see 2,000 babies and 1,700 wet-nurses under 
one roof, and herein again is the superiority 
of Russia asserted. 

The present Czar founded a big refuge at 
St. Petersburg for workmen who had become 
disabled by accident. It was the realization 
of some Frenchman's idea for the creation 
of ' Invalides Civils, ' upon the theory that 
a mechanic who is crippled at his work de- 
serves as much consideration as a soldier who 
gets maimed in war. But the refuge was 
organized on such a luxurious plan, that idle 
workmen began to injure themselves on pur- 
pose to obtain admittance to it. The place 
was full of malingerers, who by their con- 
stant drunkenness frightened away genuine 
sufferers who wanted rest. 

One day all the inmates were turned 
out together with a few roubles apiece to 
help them to set up elsewhere ; and then the 
place became a lunatic asylum ; but in a 
very quick time most of its old residents 
were back in its walls, only they pretended 
to have become mad. 

There were sham melancholies, alcoholics, 
but chiefly epileptics, because a rogue who 
feigns fits is not suspected owing to the mere 
fact that he is rational at ordinary times. 
Tiie doctors tried to counteract the sham 
epilepsy by vigorous douches and doses of 
bromide of potassium ; and sometimes they 
tried what galvanic shocks would do with a 
hardened offender. But a mujick will stand 
a good deal of doctoring for the sake of get- 
ting free quarters throughout the winter. 

To this day the asylum gets crowded with 
pseudo lunatics whenever there is a slack 
season in trade ; and the authorities have 
discovered that it is best to let the abuse 
flourish, seeing that a patient who is accused 
of shamming instantly howls and gives 
trouble to prove that he is really afflicted. 

The fault of the system lies in the lavish 
extravagance which is used to convey an 
idea of The breadth of Imperial philanthropy. 



27 

Workmen who have lived in sorts of pig- 
sties all their lives look upon the giant asy- 
lum, with its clean beds, refectories, baths, 
musical performances, and substantial dietary, 
as a terrestrial paradise. Outside St. Peters- 
burg and Moscow Russian madhouses are 
squalid prisons— as bad as Bedlam was a 
century ago ; but to these only genuine luna- 
tics resort. 

There are no private charities in Russia, 
because no Muscovite is so silly as to sub- 
scribe money which will be handled by irre- 
sponsible persons. Government takes the 
initiative in everything, and issues orders for 
the building of hospitals and asylums without 
much reference to the needs of the locality 
where these institutions are set up ; but prin- 
cipally with a view to having a good account 
of charities to show in its yearly Blue-books. 

So many hospitals and asylums must be 
erected yearly, no matter where or how. A 
provincial town which has few paupers 
gets a command from St. Petersburg to build 
a poor-house, perhaps at a moment when its 
finances are at a very low ebb. The mayor 
writes humbly to demonstrate that the rate- 
payers have been heavily assessed of late for 
the paving of their streets ; but he is an- 
swered by a report from a Government in- 
spector setting forth that his town is notori- 
ously in need of a poor-house, and there is 
nothing for it but to obey. 

No charity would ever be started if Gov- 
ernment listened to the wailings of ratepay- 
ers. Provincial governors, again, who wish 
to earn a brilliant reputation, often go in for 
a course of building regardless of expense. 
Many Russian towns have hospitals of im- 
posing size, far too large for their require- 
ments. As soon as the governor who ordered 
them has gone away they are abandoned and 
go to ruin or get converted into barracks. 

Russian hospitals are mostly sordid, and the 
doctors in them ignorant quacks. It is not 
uncommon to hear of two patients afflicted 
with different diseases being put in one bed, 
and of money voted for drugs being spent in 
medical feasts. However disgracefully man- 
aged a hospital may be, the municipal au- 
thorities take good care to report it to the 
Home Office as a pattern establishment ; and 
they will not spend a kopeck on its improve- 
ment, lest after having done so they should 
be abruptly called upon to build another on 
some new-fangled plan sent from the capital. 

Government meddlesomeness paralyzes lo- 
cal impulses. If a whole city became lep- 
rous, the mayor and his council would hesi- 
tate to cope with the evil until they had re- 
ceived orders from headquarters as to how 
they ought to act. 

Monks and nuns are required to be chari- 
table ; and to obey this official injunction they 
generally have very pretty little infirmaries 
attached to their convents ; but this costs 
them nothing, for, being allowed to beg from 
door to door for the support of such places, 
they collect a great deal more than is want- 
ed. They are also very prone to convert 
these refuges to purposes of clandestine 
midwifery. Hence a ' retreat ' in a Russian 
convent has come to bear a sense not usually 
attached to it in other countries. 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

SCHOOLS. 

Count Dimitrt Tolstox, who has been 
twelve years Minister of Public Instruction 
in Russia, is a man of large ideas who would 
like to see every mujick proficient in the 
three R's. Prince Gortschakoff, who is of a 
different opinion, lets him talk but will not 
allow him to act ; insomuch that whenever 
Count Tolstoi wants a grant, M. de Reu- 
tern, the Finance Minister, tells him with a 
doleful face that the State coffers are empty. 

There is always money for troops and Im- 
perial fetes, never for schools. Taking ac- 
count of the increase of population and the 
greater facilities for spreading knowledge, 



28 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



Russia has retrograded rather than advanced 
in education since the time of Nicholas. 

The late Czar had no notion of populariz- 
ing knowledge, but he provided a good sort 
of official education for the higher classes 
among his subjects, and insisted that they 
should avail themselves of it. As to the com- 
mercial classes, he allowed them to take care 
of themselves, which they did by establish- 
ing private schools with German professors. 

Chancellor Gortschakoff saw the dangers 
of this system, and altered it. He encour- 
ages rich noblemen to have their children 
educated at home and to send them to France 
or Germany for the finishing touch ; but he 
has laid a sweeping interdict on all private 
schools for the middle class, because these 
used to afford a better education than was to 
be obtained in official academies. A highly 
cultivated aristocracy, an officially taught, 
or mistaught, middle class, and a totally illit- 
erate populace— this would fulfil the Chan- 
cellor's ideal of a governable State. But he 
does not confess these views aloud, and balks 
education by the adroit device of seeming 
over-ready to aid it. 

About a dozen years ago the city of Nijni- 
Novgorod wished to found a university, and 
applied for a charter, promising to raise the 
endowments by local subscriptions. The 
answer that came from St. Petersburg was 
most encouraging, and assured the applicants 
that the Czar~had expressed a great interest 
in their scheme, and was graciously minded 
to help them with a grant. If they would 
wait a little till the Imperial Council had dis- 
cussed the matter, they would learn the 
amount of the grant and its conditions. 
They have been waiting ever since. 

It is of no use attempting to set up any 
educational establishment by private initia- 
tive. The project is always favorably enter- 
tained by the authorities, but is invariably 
shelved. If the promoters grow importu- 
nate, they receive a despatch full of high- 
flown language, pointing out to them how 
inexpedient it is to do things by halves. 
Their original scheme was either too small, 
and needed enlarging for the public good, or 
too extravagant, and required cutting down. 
In any case the Czar has it under his august 
consideration, &c. 

Count Tolstoi is not responsible for these 
circumlocutory proceedings, but he has no 
power against the clerks in his department. 
He himself feels a scholar's enthusiasm for 
new plans, and has drawn up an admirably 
comprehensive project of national education, 
which has been ' approved in principle ' by 
the Emperor, and is only awaiting the good 
pleasure of the Tschinn. Meanwhile the 
plan of approving great schemes in principle 
has the advantage of leading foreigners to 
think that the Russian Government is al- 
ways going to begin a good many noble 
things next New Year's Day. 

The empire is divided for academical pur- 
poses into ten scholastic circuits — St. Peters- 
burg, Moscow, Dorpat, Kiew, Warsaw, Ka- 
san, Kharkov, Wilna, Odessa, and the Cau- 
casus. Each of these is presided over by a 
curator, who is chosen less for his learning 
than for his urbanity as a courtier. In theory 
he is omnipotent ; in practice he does noth- 
ing without the advice of his Academical 
Council — a body of six members, two of 
whom are retired professors, three (generally) 
military officers, and one a police official. 
These people settle what books are to be used 
in the schools, grant professorial diplomas, 
and act as a court of appeal in questions of 
academical discipline. All the educational 
funds pass through their hands ; and a good 
share of them remains there. 

If a foreigner desire leave to teach in a 
Russian school he must apply to this council, 
who, after tapping a few fees from him, 
cause him to be examined as to his knowl- 
edge of history. Now, Russian history sets 
forth that Napoleon I. was defeated entirely 
by the Czar's generals (no mention is made of 



the winter of 1812 which froze the Grand 
Army), and that Waterloo was a Russian 
victory, Wellington being a servant of the 
European coalition of which Alexander I. 
was chief. If a foreigner be ignorant of all 
this, he is requested to learn it before he can 
get his diploma ; as to natives, having been 
instructed in these legends from their youth, 
they can gabble them" fluently, and do. 

There are nine grades in the professorate. 
The first, which confers the title of College 
Councillor, ranks with colonel, and belongs 
to the sixth degree in the Tschinn ; the low- 
est, that of College Registrar, belongs to the 
fourteenth ; below these are school ushers, 
or apparitors, who do not count as tsehinov- 
niks. 

Each grade of the professorate has allotted 
to it a curriculum of studies, and the lecturer 
must not trench on subjects which appertain 
to a higher grade. Not very long ago a mas- 
ter at the Lycee Richelieu of Odessa got into 
disgrace because in his lessons on Roman 
history he had expatiated upon the political 
results bequeathed to modern societies by the 
domination of Rome. He was told that these 
results were no business of his. How could 
scholastic order be maintained if a lower-form 
master imbued the minds of his pupils with 
views at variance with those which would be 
taught them by superior masters in the upper 
forms ? 

The Russian professor must be humble. If 
he be set to teach the first book of Euclid, 
he must be wary of showing that he knows 
anything about conic sections. Lest he 
should forget this, he is made to wear a uni- 
form, and has only to glance at the breadth 
of the silver palm-branch on the sleeve of his 
black tunic to remember what things he 
must teach and what avoid. Not till he can 
sport the gold lace of councillorship may he 
speak out all he knows, and by that time he 
will probably have learned that the politics 
of ancient Rome are hot ground to tread 
upon. 

Every city in the Empire has its lyceum, 
and every town its grammar-school. In the 
lyceums French and German are taught ; in 
the grammar-schools Gei'man sometimes, but 
not always. English can only be learned at 
St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Odessa, except 
hy private tuition. The charges for main- 
taining a boy as a boarder vary from £40 to 
£150, and at the aristocratic military school 
of St. Petersburg extras generally bring the 
sum up to £250. These rates are not higher 
than those at Eton, but the style of living 
cannot compare with that of English pub- 
lic schools. 

Russian boys sleep in dormitories ; and it 
is only within the last fifteen years that the}* 
have been allowed bedding. Formerly they 
curled themselves up in rugs and lay down 
on wooden cots. Possibly this practice still 
prevails in some of the inland schools. Then- 
fare is the eternal cabbage soup, with beef ; 
and tea, with bread but no butter. They 
wear a uniform — a tunic in summer, and in 
winter a caftan, like an ulster coat, with the 
number of their class embroidered on the 
collar. Their heads are cropped close, and 
they walk upright as ramrods ; for the most 
thorough part of their education consists in 
drill. They are usually quiet boys, very 
soft-spoken, and not much addicted to romp- 
ing — having no national game beyond that of 
leap-frog, which they play in a large empty 
room warmed like a "hot-house. They spend 
their pocket-money in cigarettes and in 
sweetened rum to put into their tea. These 
delicacies are forbidden, but can always be 
had of the school porter for a little over- 
charge. 

There is no corporal punishment nomi- 
nally, since the present Czar abolished the 
birch by a special ukase ; but discipline could 
scarcely be maintained among Russians 
without cuffing, so the professor cuffs his 
scholars and they cuff one another with na- 
tional heartiness. 



When a member of the Tschinn dies with 
out leaving sufficient to educate his children, 
these are often sent to a public school and 
afterwards to the university for nothing ; but 
this grace depends much on the deceased 
father's good conduct. Foundation scholar- 
ships are also conferred upon the sons of liv- 
ing tschinovniks as a reward for their father's 
zeal in the public service. 

The recipients of these charities are re- 
quired to enter the Crown service, and 
mostly furnish subalterns for the army, or 
else they go into the Church. The professors 
push them on more than the other boys ; for 
their attainments have to be specially re- 
ported to the district governors, and are par- 
ticularly inquired into by the curator's dele- 
gates, who visit the schools once a year to 
hold examinations. If a foundation -boy dis- 
tinguish himself conspicuously, he some- 
times receives a commission in one of the 
regiments of Guards, and along with it a 
yearly allowance from the Czar. Most of 
the adjutants and quarter-masters in the 
Guards are former charity-boys, and it may 
be as well to state that they soon enrich 
themselves in these functions. 

There are few village schools in Russia, 
and such as there are have sprung from the 
benevolence of good-natured landowners, 
and are little approved by the authorities. 
However, if a landowner chooses to start a 
school the Government does not prevent him, 
and contents itself with providing a teacher 
thoroughly orthodox and ignorant. 

In the Mirs it is very rare to find a mujick 
who can read, and even the mayor has to de- 
pend on the pope for the keeping of his ac- 
counts. A movement was started a year or two 
ago for instituting a staff of perambulating 
schoolmasters on the Swedish system, who 
should go about and disseminate the rudi- 
ments of knowledge among villages which 
were too poor to support permanent schools. 
Government, as usual, lent a ready ear to the 
scheme, but, having usurped the manage- 
ment of it, has done nothing hitherto but 
give promises. 

Now and then it will happen that a village 
pope, taking a fancy to a young mujick, in- 
structs him, and the lad in his turn imparts 
his knowledge to his fellow-villagers. But 
if this gets known to the police he may come 
to trouble for teaching without a diploma. 
Even the A B C in Russia must be taught in 
the official way. 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

MILITARY ACADEMIES AND UNIVERSITIES. 

Everything worth having in Russia is got 
by favor, and merit, as revealed by literary 
or scientific acquirements, counts for little. 
Commissions in the army are nominally be- 
stowed after an examination, preceded by a 
two years' preparation in a military school ; 
but well-connected youngsters get their first 
commissions at fifteen, and are staff captains 
by the time an industrious student has plod- 
ded his way to the top of the school and 
qualified for a sub-lieutenancy. 

As efficiency cannot secure promotion, 
and as, indeed, a man without connections 
seldom rises above the rank of captain, few 
students think it worth while to work. 
They are safe to get their commissions from 
the mere fact of having been cadets, and the 
examination set them is a pure farce. 

Subaltern commissions are so little prized 
in Russia that cashiered officers from the 
German and Austrian armies and adventurers 
from the Danubian provinces obtain them 
without difficulty ; they are bestowed as 
charities upon young men who have never 
passed through the military academies, and 
inflicted as punishment upon others who 
have led scapegrace lives and require tam- 
ing. 

An ordinary Russian subaltern can be de- 
tected from a field-officer at a glance. His 
clothes, manners, language, and phj-siogno- 
my all mark a man of coarser clay. He can 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



29 



just read and write, and perhaps speak a few 
words of German : but mostly he knows 
only his own tongue, and finds it difficult to 
understand his colonel, who affects to speak 
only French, and the regimental major, who 
is a Teuton and can stammer but a few 
words of Russian in the vilest accent. 

The majors, who form the connecting link 
between the superior officers and the subal- 
terns, and upon whom the heaviest part of 
regimental work devolves, almost all come 
from Germany ; so do the professors in the 
military schools. These persons are the 
fruits sees or failures of the German acade- 
mies, just as most of the professors in the 
civil universities are the ' wooden-spoons- 
men ' of Bonn, Gottingen, and Heidelberg — 
gentlemen who passed their student days in 
drinking more beer than Pierian waters. 
Unaccomplished as they are, however, in 
comparison with the high standard of their 
own country, they are intellectual giants in 
Russia, and make their pupils feel it. 

Nothing is more ludicrous than to see one 
of these professors talk clean over the heads 
of a class of crop-haired boys, who stare at 
him with open mouth*. Their stupidity con- 
founds him, and he flies into a German rage, 
calling them ' schafskopfen ' and ' dummer- 
juniru-n. ' He asks to see their note-books, 
ami, finding only blank pages, wants to j 
know how they can have the presumption to | 
think of leading armies ? At examinations 
he takes his mission au serieux, and proposes 
coolly to pluck the whole lot of candidates as 
an example. The school governor, with a 
quiet Russian shrug, passes them all. and at 
this the professor's disgust knows no bounds. 
But time, and the hopelessness of attempting 
reforms, sober his pedagogic zeal, and he 
consoles himself with his pipe and glass of 
kwaes for abuses which he can gain nothing 
by assailing. 

One merit these German professors have, 
for they touch no vodki. Kwass is weaker 
than their lager beer, and they can tipple 
quarts of it without being roused from their 
native stolidity. Then, having much spare 
time, they can make up for past idleness, and 
occasionally read so deep that they are ena- 
bled to make a good income by coaching pri- 
vate pupiU. 

In every academy there is naturally a small 
nucleus of hard workers. Some are wealthy 
young men who have been well brought up 
at home, and see the advantages of learning ; 
others, poor drudges who toil hopelessly out 
of love for book*. The former are sure to 
find their industry serve them by and by ; 
the latter so to swell the ranks of half-edu- 
cated malcontents with which the army 
abounds. 

Rich and poor who study in earnest be- 
come Nihilists, for the philosophy which 
German tutors teach under the rose conduces 
to the grossest materialism. It uproots alL 
tli" illusions of youth. It dams up all those 
noble impulses which make a young man 
yearn towards the traditions of the past or 
\irji- him to hope in the future. It is a 
philosophy of sneer, sensualism, and selfish- 
ness, which dwarfs intellectual development 
as surely as it blights the moral character. 

The young Englishman who has been at a 
university, and led a studious life there, is 
sure to look lwck afterwards with pleasure to 
the lessons of some tutor who in private in- 
tercourse sought to draw his mind towards 
lofty objects. The young Russian can look 
back only to the pipe-smoking churl, who 
scoffed him out of conceit with all the fan- 
cies of his boyhood. He learns that the 
world is a battle-field, in which a man must 
do the best for himself by hook or crook — 
that principles are mere conventional rules 
wluch a man must outwardly observe to gain 
the good opinion of his fellows, but which 
need not bind him in his secret actions : and 
that, in sum, politeness and cunning are the 
two cards which when played together win 
most panics here below. 



All this, grafted on to the religiousness 
which a boy has acquired at home, makes a 
curious compound ; for the boy can never 
quite extirpate his belief in genuflexions and 
the saving power of icons. These linger like 
the stumps in a piece of woodland which has 
been roughly cleared for building a log-hut, 
and they crop up through the floor of the 
crazy structure with an odd effect. The 
Russian remains superstitious while profess- 
ing to be a sceptic. He denies the Deity, 
but is trammelled by a religion of omens ten 
times more tormenting than the one which 
he has discarded ; for it comes athwart 
everything he does. He is afraid to wear an 
opal ; he grows pale at the sight of a loaf 
turned wrong side up ; he wears a relic in a 
locket next his skin ; and is miserable for 
days if he has caught sight of a new moon 
over his left shoulder. 

The life of Russian students in the Civil 
universities is a cross between that of French 
and German students. At Moscow and Kiew 
only does the English plan of boarding with- 
in college exist. The college is a kind of 
barracks in which every student has one 
room, where he lives as it suits him, taking 
his meals by himself or in messes which he 
forms with others. There is no common re- 
fectory, except for the theological students, 
who wear black gowns and follow a semi- 
monastic rule. The other students wear 
uniforms with facings according to the 
career which they are going to enter. The 
medical students sport gray and green ; the 
future lawyers black and blue, those who are 
going into the army black and red ; and these 
carry swords. 

The most aristocratic university is that of 
St. Petersburg, where all the members of the 
Imperial family and all courtiers' sons are 
entered even when they do not mean to grad- 
uate. The chairs of modern languages and 
Latin literature are ably filled at St. Peters- 
burg ; but Moscow enjoys a greater reputa- 
tion for law and medicine, Kiew for theology 
and history, and Odessa for Greek and math- 
ematics. 

The University of Odessa is also the most 
liberal, and was for a long while the resort 
of Poles. There is some law now which lim- 
its the number of Poles who can be educated 
here, and when the list is complete fresh can- 
didates for matriculation are requested to go 
elsewhere. This rule applies even to the sons 
of Polish noblemen who are supposed to be 
well affected to the Russian Government. 

The discipline of the universities is very 
lax as regards morals ; for the masters have 
no authority to ask a student for an account 
of his time, or to insist that he shall be back 
within his lodgings by a certain hour of the 
evening. On the other hand, as students are 
much addicted to forming secret political 
clubs, either with a view to conspiracy or for 
the milder purpose of importing prohibited 
foreign literature, nothing is more common 
than to hear that a batch of them has been 
transferred by Imperial order from one uni- 
versity to another. Thus a St. Petersburg 
student will be ordered to Kazan or one from 
Odessa to Wilna. 

These transfers are effected at the cost of 
their relatives if the students be well off, if 
not at the expense of Government ; but in 
either case the transferred student lives under 
strict supervision during the rest of his aca- 
demical career. He must reside within lodg- 
ings appointed for him, receive no visits from 
brother students in the same case as himself, 
and is not allowed to go home during the 
vacations. 

Sometimes the Government adds to these 
penalties that of debarring an offender from 
the profession on which he had set his heart, 
and sending him with u commission to a regi- 
ment quartered in Siberia or the Caucasus. 
Such examples ought to make students cau- 
tious, but they do not ; although it is notori- 
: ous that since the famous conspiracy of 1824, 
| which was quenched in blood, down to the 



present time there have been hundreds of 
university plots not one of which has suc- 
ceeded. 

There is a simple infatuation in Russian 
character which pushes young men to think 
that they can always outwit their rulers. It 
should be added that many of the so-called 
conspiracies, which bring such dismal conse- 
quences upon their authors, are nothing but 
childish plots to buy French or English re- 
views. The student deems it incumbent 
upon his growing manhood to nourish his 
mind with the literature which his Govern- 
ment forbids ; and he equally risks condign 
punishment whether he purchases the Russo- 
Socialist tracts published in Switzerland, or 
a London newspaper which happens for the 
nonce to be under an interdict — say the Pall 
Mall Gazette. 

CHAPTER XXX. 

POLITICAL AGENTS — LADIES. 

Everybody is aware that in all the capi- 
tals of the civilized world there flourishes 
some Russian lady of rank who helps to lead 
the fashion and is very successful in making 
friends. She is not the ambassadress, but 
she is always to be seen at the embassy par- 
ties. She is on the right side of forty, and if 
not always pretty she is invariably fascinat- 
ing, and speaks to perfection the language of 
the country where she resides. 

Her husband is in Russia. Little is known 
of him beyond his name and the fact that he 
is a nobleman having general's rank. But he 
is a living though unobtrusive reality; and his 
wife sports on gala occasions a star and a 
diamond shoulder-knot, proving her to be a 
member of the Imperial order for ladies, and 
one of the Empress's dames d'atours to boot. 

That this lady is fulfilling some mission as 
a Russian agent none among those who know 
her much doubt ; but the suspicions she ex- 
cites in nc wise hinder her from obtaining 
social influence ; nor does the part which 
she plays require any unusual craft, but sim- 
ply the tact and penetration common to all 
accomplished women. 

The Princess, as she is called, has plenty 
of money, goes everywhere, and soon gets to 
be liked. Then she takes to dispensing hos- 
pitality to a very select circle. Politics are 
freely talked at these little gatherings where 
tea is drunk d la Bussc. There is no mystery 
as to the hostess's objects. She is the first to 
declare that it is her chief wish to clear up 
' misconception ' as to Russia's designs ; but 
she professes to be doing this from pure 
patriotism, from humanity, from the desire 
to see two great countries understand each 
other, and so forth. 

Thus stated, her aims seem legitimate ; and 
her admirers would ridicule the notion of her 
being a paid agent. Perhaps she is not. Her 
money may come from her own friends, and 
it is possibly to her husband that she ad- 
dresses those long letters full of confidential 
notes as to social and political doings in the 
land where she sojourns. She has an eye 
everywhere and faithfully reports all society 
scandals before they have burst upon the 
world. She knows who are the people hold- 
ing occult influence, and will not mind pat- 
ronizing a lady of tarnished reputation if any 
man of status — be he journalist or statesmen 
—can be ' got at ' through her. 

Her heart is in her work, just as much as 
is that of a duly accredited diplomatist. She 
is a passionate partisan. All her vanity as, a 
woman, her family interests, perhaps her 
heart's affections, are enlisted in the cause 
which she represents ; and it would be as 
absurd to dub her doings with a bad name as 
it would be to despise the hoary old plenipo- 
tentiary who, in discharging his duty, often 
uses far more duplicity than she without hav- 
ing the excuse of her illusions. 

The game of the feminine agent is always 
the same. If the Government in the land 
where she resides be well disposed towards 
Russia, she becomes the intermediary of un- 



30 

official civilities between the two Courts. 
She helps to negotiate a marriage, or prepare 
an exchange of august visits. She smooths 
away little grievances that have come from 
ruffled etiquette ; gets an unpopular ambas- 
sador removed, and conveys those secret as- 
surances which form the hidden basis of 
treaties. 

On the Continent she dispenses decora- 
tions ; and procures honorary colonelcies in 
Russian regiments for Imperial or Serene 
Highnesses in their teens. She is a letter- 
carrier for monarchs who think it imprudent 
to correspond with their foreign relatives by 
post or through the legations ; and now and 
then she may be found dipping her active 
fingers in the preliminaries of a loan. 

But these occupations are comparatively 
unexciting, and our Princess is much more 
in her element when she has. to foil the policy 
of a hostile Government by raising cabals 
among the Opposition. The intrigues by 
which the Princess Lieven sought to throw 
the Duke of Wellington out of office are well 
known. 

Statesmen in opposition are not always 
scrupulous ; sometimes they can be misled 
by erroneous information, and sometimes it 
will happen that an emotional leader of men, 
full of spleen at having been turned out of 
place, and full of ardor for a ' new cry, ' will 
let himself be worked into a state of senti- 
mental hysteria, and convulse his country by 
his antics. The emotional politician, at 
once vain, ambitious, and rash, offers a fine 
prey to Russian agents. He is sure to be fol 
lowed by a number of other emotionalists, 
just as in revival meetings when some ' saint ' 
"begins to howl all the other saints fall to 
howling, without well knowing why. The 
malcontents, the ignorant, the mystical 
shrieking sisterhoods, the sects of semi-relig- 
ious fanatics who are always ready to give 
tongue in behalf of any cry with a mystical 
twang in it — all these swell the ranks of 
those who join the standard of Holy Russia. 

The active Princess triumphs : her state- 
ments have been accepted as gospel truth. 
The emotional politician has been softly ban- 
tered by her out of his antiquated fears about 
Russian aggressiveness ; and he is truly so 
ashamed of having entertained such fears 
that he and his men go about laughing in their 
turn at all who have not been cured of the 
alarmist folly. So does the Princess laugh, 
but in her sleeve. 

The Russian agent in petticoats has no 
need to scatter much gold about her. Hu- 
man credulity, weakness, and vanity give 
her servants enough for her purposes. In 
continental cities she always has a troop of 
journalists at her orders, and she takes care 
to have them rewarded with bits of ribbon to 
put in their buttonholes ; but there are some 
who do not serve her for the mere sake of 
these insignia. They believe in her, and 
value her "friendship. Some, more tenderly 
inclined, make love to her. 

In Paris and Vienna she gives large par- 
ties, to which the adventurers of the quill 
think it an honor to be admitted ; while oth- 
ers, more indifferent to social baits, are ca- 
joled by t he glamour of a possible Russian alii; 
ance, or by that attraction towards Musco- 
vite things which is felt by men of despotic 
minds. Joseph De Maistre has left not a 
few disciples on the Continent who rejoice in 
what they call the ' autocracy of the North.' 
Men who loathe mob rule and despise parlia- 
ments, newspapers, and all other things 
modern turn their eyes with a refreshing sen- 
sation towards the country where Liberalism 
is treated like the cattle-plague. 

In France the Legitimists, in Germany and 
Austria the old Feudalists, are alwaj's friends 
of the Russian agent. She does much by 
their means ; and, when she cannot succeed 
in making them shape national policy, she 
extracts information from them which assists 
her in thwarting liberal policy. On the Con- 
tinent liberal sentiment is always anti-Rus- 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 

sian ; and this is especially the case in France ! 
and Germany. During Louis Philippe's 
reign, the Princess Lieven, having left Eng- 
land, became the Egeria of M. Guizot, and 
had not a little to do" with the events which 
threw out M. Thiers in 1840 and kept his 
Conservative successor in the Premiership 
for seven years. Perhaps it was the remem- 
brance of this circumstance that induced M. 
Thiers to act very cautiously towards Rus- 
sians after the Franco-German war. To the 
day of his death the Russian Ambassador, 
Prince Orloff, and that engaging lady, Prin- 
cess Lise Troubetzkoi', were among his most 
assiduous visitors ; but M. Thiers was a pro- 
foundly astute man, who never let himself 
be caught with chaff. His Russian friends 
must have been greatly abashed at learning, 
after his death, that he took a quite anti- 
Muscovite view of the Eastern Question, and 
that, had he returned to the presidency, he 
would have let Europe know it. 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

POLITICAL AGENTS — MEN. 

When the bully of a private school wants 
to pick a quarrel with a boy smaller than him- 
self , but is at a loss for a pretext, he will, maybe, 
incite his younger brother to go and be saucy 
to that boy. The younger brother having 
received a well-deserved cuff on the ears and 
beginning to blubber, the bully interferes by 
accusing the other boy of bullying, and 
thrashes him. This is what has been happen- 
ing in the East, where Russia, after stirring 
up Bulgarians and Servians to revolt, has 
trounced Turkey for defending herself. 

Supposing that Ireland were overrun with 
Russian emissaries, promoting a Fenian in- 
surrection, discributing arms, inciting the 
populace to refuse paying taxes, to insult 
English officials, and to murder Protestants 
for the sake of fanning religious passion — 
how long would English longanimity bear 
with such a state of things ? 

Or change the scene to India, as can be 
done without any stretch of imagination ; 
for when the Turkish question has been dis- 
posed of the Indian question will crop up, 
and Russia will begin sowing discontent from 
Calcutta to Ceylon. Will England then be 
accused of atrocities if, confronted by a new 
mutiny, she has to quell it as she did that of 
1857-8 ? Who are the ' atrocious ' men — 
those who provoke strife or those who are 
dragged into it, and, being in, have to fight 
for bare life ? 

All Englishmen who have relatives or 
friends in India will soon have to bear in 
mind that the proportion of Europeans to 
natives in that country is of 1 to 250. The 
Russians, who will goad the 250 to rise up 
against the 1, will therefore, according to 
doctrines prevalent in the Bulgarian case, be 
fulfilling a mission of humanity. The late 
Sir Henry Havelock might not have thought 
so, but sons sometimes reason upon princi- 
ples unknown to their fathers. 

Russian emissaries have been infesting the 
Dauubian Principalities for the last sixty 
years ; and three times — in 1827, 1853^4, and 
in 1876-7 — their machinations have brought 
about a bloody issue to that Eastern Question 
which but for them would have been no 
question at all. 

The question is, in fact, simply whether 
the Russians shall have Constantinople ? 
Coveting the provinces of Turkey in Europe, 
but being long balked of taking them by 
British vigilance, the Russians adopted the 
plan of making the Christian districts ungov- 
ernable in order that they might have an ex- 
cuse for saying that the Sultan could not 
govern them. 

No people were ever so wantonly provoked 
as the Turks, and no Government ever did so 
much as the Turkish to allay discontent by 
heaping concession on concession. In Rou- 
mania and Servia the hospodars gradually 
became independent in all but the name. 
They had their armies, Parliaments, courts of 



justice, hereditary succession to the throne ; j : 
and the slender lien which bound them to H 
Turkey was rather a protection than a bond, tt 

In Bulgaria, Roumelia, Albania, and Mon- 
tenegro the Christians were free to own land, 1 
trade, and have their own schools and j 
churches. Their clergy was much more in- I 
dependent than that in Russia. The popes I 
were appointed by the Patriarch of Constan- I 
tinople, with whose selections the Porte I 
never interfered ; and if the clergy were cor- j 
rupt, ignorant, and dissolute in their morals, 
that was no fault of the Turks. 

The only inferiority of which the Chris- I 
tians had to complain was that the} - were ex- -| 
empted from military service ; but they | 
would never have discovered that this was a j 
grievance if Russian emissaries had not put j 
it into their heads that human felicity con- j 
sists in spending ten years of one's life as a j 
private soldier on a half-penny a day. 

The French peasant proprietor, who curses r 
the conscription every February, would have J 
thought the lot of the Bulgarian rustic envia- | 
ble beside his own. The Bulgarian paid few I 
taxes and lived a life of rude plenty, besides I 
getting his liquor and tobacco much cheaper J 
than tliey are to be had in France. No ex- !| 
ciseman troubled him for setting up private 'I 
distilleries. If he drove his cows and pigs to I 
market he was not bothered with octroi dues ; ' I 
and when his father died he inherited his I 
fields without paying a piastre of succession || 
duty. 

A big grievance has been made out of the 'j 
fact that when a Turkish pasha passed on 'I 
horseback the Bulgarian had to climb off his J 
donkey and salute him : but the Russian mu- I 
jick who meets a deputy-provincial governor | 
ducks down on both knees in the mud, and j 
the Bulgarians themselves do homage to their I 
own noblemen in a similar style of their own j 
choice. 

Again, the Bulgarian who refused to pay I 
his small taxes was bastinadoed. Well, the 
Turks have not yet had time to build 
model penitentiaries, and, even if such insti- 
tutions had existed, the conveying of gangs of 
refractory Christians to fill them~would have 
been a costly and roundabout way of dealing 
with an evil which called for prompter reme- 
dies. 

Thanks to Russian instigation, the Bulga- 
rians were always resisting the tax-gatherer ; 
but the bastinado was not the immediate, or 
even inevitable, consequence of such resist- 
ance. The pasha heard what the man had 
to say for himself, and if he was in real diffi- 
culties he would give him time ; but if the 
fellow lied— as he mostly did— and pleaded 
penury when there was every reason to sup- 
pose that he had hidden his money under- 
ground, he got a whipping, and it served 
him right. 

The men who were thinskinned were al- 
ways ready with their money, whereas the 
sturdier churls, to whom two dozen cuts 
with a bamboo were no great matter, lived 
in permanent debt to the Exchequer. You 
could see them rubbing their backs after 
their castigation and running off among 
their women folks to be petted and compli- 
mented on their pluck. They had a way of 
putting their tongues in their cheeks and 
winking which was refreshing to see. 

If anything, the Mussulman officials were 
rather too indulgent, in their fear of giving 
these troublesome Christians offence. Over 
and over again has a pasha been called 
sharply to task at Constantinople for alleged 
acts of cruelty which he had never commit- 
ted, or which had been grossly exaggerated 
and distorted. The Bulgarians knew that 
they had the Russian ambassador at their 
back, and they abused this circumstance to 
raise a hullaballoo upon the slightest pre- 
texts. 

They are incorrigible liars, who sorely try 
the temper of any man who has dealings 
with them. If a strong man collars one of 
them in anger, the creature shrivels up in 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



31 



I his sheepskin and whines till from very pity 
i the other throws him off. But let six Bul- 
J garians meet a Turk unprotected on a dark 
night, and it will be a bad look-out for that 
I Turk. 

The Christian subjects of Turkey have 
never raised themselves to dignity or hon- 
: esty, because their Russian counsellors have 
fanned their worst passions to convert them 
into arrant grievance-mongers. Through- 
out all the Danubian provinces Russian 
agents were constantly on the tramp, delud- 
ing them with fables, flattering them, excit- 
ing them, and pretending to pity their hard 
condition. 

Some came as pedlars or horse-venders ; 
others were permanently located in the vil- 
lages as school-masters, and many popes, 
who were in Russian pay, joined in the agita- 
tion. Hearing from scores of mouths that 
he was an ill-used being, the Bulgarian natu- 
rally learned to think so. Though he had 
everything he wanted, he set to dreaming of 
what other things he should like to have. 
He was told that when Turkish rule was 
broken his fields would be worth thrice their 
present value, he would have four times as 
many oxen, and fowls more than he could 
count. 

The Russians said nothing about extra 
taxes ; but what they said was enough to make 
the Bulgarian feel that the pasha was his 
fierce oppressor, whereas the indolent Turk- 
ish gentleman protected him against the low- 
class Turk, who but for this would have 
eaten him up. 

Long before the Turkish Government had 
opened its eyes to the fact that it was no use 
trying to conciliate men who would not be 
conciliated, the low-class Mussulman had dis- 
covered this, and he hated the Bulgarian with 
all his heart. He despised him, too, as being 
a man less truthful, upright, and temperate 
than himself, and far less courageous. Some- 
times his intense dislike, exasperated by some 
wilful insult, found vent in blows ; and then 
hi; was bambooed. Many a Turk has been 
whipped for molesting a Bulgarian, though 
admirers of the latter have taken no account 
of these stripes. 

The truth is the Turkish authorities en- 
deavored to cany the dish even so long as it 
was possible. They dispensed justice accord 
ing to their light ; "they kept the antagonistic 
races from flying at each other's throats ; 
and it is not at their door that the blame lies 
if the smouldering tires which they more than 
once nearly extinguished always blazed out 
anew, thanks to the cunning, treacherous 
hirelings who were constantly squirting 
fresh oil. 

If England should feebly allow the day to 
come when Hindoos shall treat her officials 
as the Turks were treated by the Christians 
of Bulgaria, she will learn what it costs to 
try and do good to a people who will not be 
coaxed, and who have been urged to look 
upon kindness as a sign of fear justifying 
more and more energy in disaffection. 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

E>"GLIStI COLONISTS IN RUSSIA. 

Rcssia has always been overrun with for- 
eigners, and until recently Englishmen were 
encouraged to settle there ; but the English 
who were most encouraged throve worst, 
whereas those who were not made particu- 
larly welcome generally got on pretty well. 

Adventurers of good address were sure to 
thrive. If a man had outrun the constable 
at home or fallen into trouble with the au- 
thorities in India, Russia offered a fair field 
for his energies ; and if he had the good luck 
to be taken up by some tschinovnik who had 
been his travelling companion in better days, 
he could be drafted into the service of the 
Crown without difficulty. 

British consuls have often been abashed at 
meeting a gorgeous being with a strong Irish 
brogue who held some such post as deputy- 



inspector of imports in a sea-coast town. He 
wore a braided coat and a star, and was 
known as the Colonel Count O'Toole, or 
O'Rooney, or McPhunn. A jovial fellow, 
of course, and a fine thief to boot, who was 
hand-in-glove with all the smugglers on the 
seaboard, and paid a rent for his inspector- 
ship to the Russian magnate who had pro- 
cured it for him, by gifts of contraband 
cigars and wine. 

He had always a good story to tell of the 
reasons which had induced him to enter the 
Russian service, which he would declare, 
with a wink, to be the finest in the world ; 
and if the consul countenanced him, he was 
ready with offers of small services, and tried 
to instal himself as an official hanger-on of 
the consulate. If the consul gave him a wide 
berth, he would become troublesome, and go 
about saying that he had quarrelled with his 
country for political reasons, and felt only 
scorn for the flag which symbolized oppres- 
sion of Ireland. 

It is from these gentlemen that Russians 
get their notions about British tyranny in 
Erin — notions which find such eloquent ex- 
pression in the articles of the Gulos favoring 
Home Rule. 

That same Golos, by the bye, published two 
years ago as a serial the account of the Irish 
rebellion of 1795, modernizing it, however, 
so as to make it appear as though all its san- 
guinary incidents dated no further back than 
the period of the Fenian nonsense in 1867-8. 
The achievements of Emmett and Lord Ed- 
ward Fitzgerald were laid to the credit of 
Barrett, who was hanged at Newgate for the 
Clerkenwell explosion, of Allen, Larkin, 
Gould, and other such heroes ; and all this 
was so cleverly done as to indicate that a 
genuine Irish hand must have revised the 
proof-sheets — if no more. 

The English university passman who has 
gone out to Russia as a tutor, married there, 
and obtained a civil service appointment, is 
another pretty common type ; so is his sis- 
ter, the governess, who likewise marries and 
becomes a convert to the Greek faith, after a 
study of its dogmas, which seem to her ' so 
like our Church of England.' 

In many princely houses there is an English 
governess, and the members of the Imperial 
family have generally an English lectrice at- 
tached to their household. The Empress, 
who prefers British literature to French, has 
always had an English lady to read novels to 
her ; and it must be owned that the position 
of Englishwomen engaged in Russia to read 
or teach is one of comfort and dignity. 
They are handsomely paid and courteously 
treated ; but, if any lady reading this should 
think the Czar's empire just the place for 
her, she must be warned to stand on her 
guard against matrimonial deceptions. 

Russians are swift to propose marriage, 
especially when bored inside their country 
houses ; but a tschinovnik who marries with- 
out permission of the marshal of the nobility 
in his province sees his wife tabooed, and it 
is the custom of the marshals always to re- 
fuse permissions for raemllianceH. So the 
young English wife who had hoped to sail 
into society on the arm of a prince, finds to 
her disgust that every door is closed against 
her ; and should her husband grow weary of 
her, he soon offers her a lump sum to consent 
to a divorce and go home. If she refuses she 
stands a chance of being divorced without 
the lump sum. 

There are few girls' schools in Russia ; 
and if a governess, losing her situation and 
yet wishing to remain in the country, hunts 
for employment in the big cities, she will 
only be allowed to receive pupils at her house 
after passing an examination in attainments 
and orthodoxy, which requires money. She 
will equally have to abjure her religion if she 
seeks to open a shop or a boarding house for 
officers, as some do. 

Talking of orthodoxy reminds us of a 
couple of very pale and earnest young Eng- 



lish curates whom we once discovered offici- 
ating in the Russian church of a town on the 
Black Sea. They had come out there under 
the common impression that the Russian 
ritual and their own were akin, and because 
' they wished to learn church Greek, ' said 
they ; and they were unable to get home, in 
the first place because they had no money, 
and in the next because they had signed a 
year's engagement with the local pope, nego- 
tiated through a Jew bagman. It turned out 
upon inquiry that this pope had been show- 
ing them off for money, and that the archi- 
mandrite of the diocese had been trumpeting 
their alleged conversion as an important 
event in politics. The two converts were 
well pleased to be repatriated at their con- 
sul's expense, and their experience of Rus- 
sian Ritualism seems to have been, on the 
whole, bewildering. 

English engineers, venders of agricultural 
machinery, and tea and leather merchants 
were to be found in fair numbers about Rus- 
sia some years ago ; none of these could suc- 
ceed until they had got imbued with the 
Muscovite way of doing business, by bribes 
and overreaching. There was no chance for 
the man who would not let himself be robbed 
of twopence in order to obtain five pounds. 

An unlucky merchant one day came to a 
British consul and complained bitterly that 
he had received a consignment of pickles from 
England and that the custom-house officials 
wanted to open all his jars and bottles and 
turn out their contents to see if they contained 
any prohibited literature. 

The consul hinted at the manners of the 
country in respect of douceurs ; but the mer- 
chant answered that he had never submitted 
to extortion and never would; so all his 
pickles were turned out, the officials politely 
telling him that since M. Herzen's subversive 
Kolokol had penetrated into Russia inside sar- 
dine-boxes, they were obliged to be particu- 
lar. In an amusing novel by Mr. Sutherland- 
Edwards, 'The Governor's Daughter,' in 
which the darkest features of Russian dom- 
ination in Poland are faithfully and yet 
humorously portrayed, may be found a droll 
account of this device for introducing sedi- 
tious literature into Russia inside sardine 
boxes. 

As to engineers, many who have gone out 
to Russia on the faith of brilliant contracts 
have had to serve a rough apprenticeship till 
they discovered that contracts are of no avail 
without fees. As these fees would take 50 
per cent, off a salary, the question soon pre- 
sents itself to the engineer in this shape : 
' Go home ; or stop, pay and recoup myself 
as I can ? ' Most stop and recoup themselves 
by doing scamped work, which explains 
why Russia has scarcely a single bridge, 
canal, or line of rail but swallowed up twice 
its original cost in repairs within ten years of 
its inauguration. 

Not very long ago an English merchant, 
who had lately arrived in Odessa, walked into 
the post-office to ask for his letters, and found 
a postman in the act of emptying a baa on to 
the table in the public room. A well-dressed 
man, who was standing by, began instantly 
selecting some of the bulkiest parcels, and 
fingering them, evidently with a view to 
feeting whether there was any money inside. 
The merchant happened to see a parcel ad- 
dressed to himself thus dealt with, and re- 
covered it, not without protesting. The 
well-dressed man, who was a thief, apolo- 
gized ; but the merchant learned the same 
day that if he wished to insure his letters for 
the future he must pay a post-office clerk on 
purpose to look after them, and have them 
delivered at his office. These early lessons 
in Russian customs soon bear their fruits in 
the mind of a foreigner who wants to get on. 

Russia is no place for Englishmen at this 
moment, for they would be exposed to con- 
tinual insults. The Muscovite, who can be 
so mellifluous when he pleases, reveals his 
Tartar attributes very quickly when he 



32 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



thinks to curry favor with his Government 
by treating a foreigner with contumely. 

At this time it is known all over Russia 
that the English are in bad odor, and that 
nothing would be risked by snubbing them. 
So the English mercantile community are 
not precisely enjoying a good time of it, and 
those who can get on with merely an extra 
amount of bribing, and without having to 
show their fists now and then, may esteem 
themselves lucky. 

Fists are always a remedy against the in- 
solence of Russians of the lower class, and 
even against petty officials, who think that a 
man who has the pluck to beat them must of 
needs be a somebody. But against the 
slights of higher people there is nothing but 
to grin and bear it, unless a man would re- 
sort to duels, in which he would soon be 
worsted, for the Russians cultivate duelling 
arts better than the English. A gentlemanly 
Muscovite, who knows little else, can gen- 
erally slash a face with a sabre d I'aUemande, 
or pink with a foil in the last approved style, 
that he has learned from a pupil of Pons or 
Gatechair. 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

FRENCTIMEN IN RUSSIA. 

It was a Russian who said that France 
is the only country that would be seriously 
missed off the globe if an earthquake were 
to swallow it up. Paris is the Russian's 
paradise, and French people are his minister- 
ing angels. He employs them as cooks, hair- 
dressers, dancing-masters, professors in fenc- 
ing and riding — to say nothing of actors and 
actresses. 

Since the Franco-German war the boyards 
who belong to the Czarewitch's party, which 
is anti-German, affect more than ever to sur- 
round themselves with French servants, to 
read French books, and to extol French gen- 
erals at the expense of German. 

A favorite piece of impertinence practised 
by divers distinguished ladies consists in 
feigning a total ignorance of the German 
language in the presence of persons whom 
this ignorance must especially irritate — Teu- 
ton tschinovniks, Prussian attaches, and 
serene highnesses on their travels. 

At the theatre, again, Parisian troupes are 
patronized with a liberality never shown to 
the strolling companies engaged at Berlin, and 
any allusion made on the stage as to the glo- 
ries of France is sure to be hailed with pro- 
longed applause. Last year the German am- 
bassador was so ill-advised as to protest 
against a patriotic ' gag ' introduced by a 
songstress in one of Lecocq's operettas. 
The manager forbade the gag, but at the 
next performance three of the actresses ap- 
peared in costumes which seen side by side 
formed the tricolor — one being red, the other 
white, and the third blue. As soon as the 
audience detected this device there arose a 
prolonged acclamation, in which the ap- 
plause of the Czarewitch was especially no- 
ticed ; and thus proof was given that the alli- 
ance of the two Emperors is not one which 
the popular opinion of St. Petersburg ratifies. 

However, for all the kindness which 
French people receive in Russia they do not 
like the Russians. The actress who returns 
to Paris loaded with diamonds and furs 
presented to her by prodigal admirers laughs 
at the veneer of good manners which covers 
the deep grain of Muscovite coarseness ; and 
artists who are employed to decorate the 
palaces of the nobility soon get tired of the 
eternal pose which does duty among the boy- 
ards for grandeur. 

There is all the difference between a French 
grand seigneur and a Russian prince that 
there is between a good picture and cheap 
copy of the same in loud colors ; and although 
a French Legitimist nobleman often pretends 
to admire the Russian system of government, 
he never cares to live long in Russia, for he 
is shocked at every moment by that absence 
of mesure in manners which in France is- ac- 



counted the criterion of good breeding. 
Russians who frequent the gambling-tables 
of Monaco or the Cercle de la Mediterranee 
at Nice flatter themselves that they produce a 
fine impression by ostentatiously squandering 
immense sums, but even French newspaper 
reporters have ceased to be electrified by such 
performances. An Englishman or an Amer- 
ican will lose twice as much money without 
a tenth of the fuss. 

The French Liberal who admires Russia has 
yet to be found. The bitterest satirists of 
Russia, from M. de Custine downwards, have 
been Frenchmen ; and there is not a French- 
man of any brains, among the many who are 
employed in the country, but expresses his 
opinion of the Empire and its people after a 
few months' sojourn there in terms of con- 
tempt. 

How can it be otherwise, considering how 
straight is a Frenchman's logic, how deep 
his hatred of injustice, brutality, and hypoc- 
risy ? Perhaps a brilliant pupil of the Pari- 
sian Ecole Normale has gone out to Russia as 
tutor to the sons of a wealthy boyard holding 
high rank in the Tschinn. He proceeds to a 
fine palace on an estate within a day's jour- 
ney of the capital, and the first month of his 
stay there is fraught with all sorts of pleasant 
hospitalities. His hosts regale him with a 
bear-hunt and make him a present of bruin's 
skin. He has a luxurious apartment. Two 
or three servants are told off to attend him. 
He is informed that the horses, sledges, guns, 
and dogs of the establishment are all at his 
disposal, and his employers treat him on a 
footing of perfect equality. 

But what pleases the tutor more than this 
is the philanthropic and progressive spirit of 
the Russian prince, who discusses questions 
of social and political economy with the grace 
of a courtier and the spirit of a sage. He 
knows what his country wants, and is full of 
noble schemes for improving the condition of 
his tenantry. He means to build some model 
cottages and a village school. He will not 
be content until he has uprooted superstition 
from his estates, and converted all his de- 
pendants into thinking creatures ; he relies 
upon his young friend to help him in this 
good work, and so forth, until the inexperi- 
enced Normalian reflects that he has truly 
fallen upon a jewel of a prince. 

But months pass and nothing comes of the 
grandee's noble schemes. The tenantry are 
steeped in dirt, ignorance, and drink ; the 
servants of the household cringe like slaves, 
and when the winter season arriv es, and the 
prince betakes himself to St. Petersburg, 
leaving the tutor and his young charges in 
the country house, the disgusted Frenchman 
finds that he can scarcely get his orders 
obeyed for the constant tipsiness of the do- 
mestics. 

Reflecting that Rome was not built in a 
day, he concludes that it may require time 
to erect model cottages and a school ; but he 
ends by discovering that the time of the 
boyard is taken up with ecarte and back- ■ 
stairs intrigues having for their object the 
obtaining of some ornamental Court appoint- 
ments ; while Madame la Princesse, whose 
health is delicate, is touring it in France with 
a retinue of servants and a Wallachian count, 
half courier, half cavalier-servente. 

Sometimes the Prince swoops down on his 
estate to kiss his children and levy supplies 
from his agent, and each of these visits is fol- 
lowed by prolonged lamentations on the part 
of the tenantry, who have been shorn to the 
quick. The tutor, meanwhile, finds that his 
employer has not only grown cool on the sub 
ject of social improvement, but shows a dis- 
position to yawn when the topic is mentioned. 
The exactions of some French actress are 
what now chiefly concern his princely mind ; 
and, taking the tutor as a confidant of his 
amourette, he asks him kindly to compose a 
few gallant sonnets, which shall be forwarded 
to the charmer inside bouquets. 

Thus years roll on until one day it inevi- 



tably happens that prince and princess, hav- 
ing run through more money than they can 
afford, announce their intention of coming to 
reside for a year or two on their estate in order 
to recruit both their health and their finances. 
They arrive soon afterwards, they and their 
servants, in a caravan of muddy landaus 
poorly harnessed. The prince has grown 
bald, and his hands shake as in palsy, from 
too much champagne. The princess has 
grown fat and querulous ; there are crows' 
feet round her eyes, and the flush of stimu- 
lants on her puffy cheeks is but half con- 
cealed by a thick layer of violet powder. 

Then the French tutor has a fine time of it, 
for the prince tries to convert him into a boon, 
companion, while the princess expects him 
to read French novels to her. If the tutor, 
taking his educational labors au serieux, de- 
clines these frivolous occupations, his em- 
ployers soon vote him a bore, and get rid of 
him by showing a supercilious impertinence 
which his French temper will not brook. 
If, on the contrary, being a man of convivial 
mood, he accepts his new lot, he will possibly 
be drawn into playing ecarte with the prince 
of an evening, after a champagne dinner, 
and will lose two or three years' salary in a 
few evenings. 

A Russian has no tact, and thinks nothing 
of winning money from a person in his own 
employment. A French artist who had gone 
out to paint the palace of a boyard was once 
cleaned out of the price of his labors by his 
affable host, who chanced to have been un- 
lucky with cards at the Cercle des Anglais. 
However, if a tutor be so unfortunate as to 
gamble away his earnings, he will at least 
not lose board and lodging, for his emploj'cr 
will keep him to his life's end if only he be 
amusing. Of course, he will have to drop 
all reference to model cottages ; for when 
once a boyai'd has aired his philanthropic 
fads for the entertainment of a newcome 
foreigner, there is an end of the matter ; and 
he is as incapable of a second performance as 
fireworks once exploded. 

Among the minor hardships which French- 
men have to endure in Russia is that of 
stomaching the national cookery. At din- 
ner parties you are ushered into a room 
where a table stands spread with caviare, ham, 
salt fish, cheese and liqueurs. Many take this 
for the dinner itself, and wonder why chairs 
are not provided. M. de Molinari, editor of 
the Journal des Debats, relates that on his 
first journey to Russia he fell into a mistake 
of this sort and astonished his hosts by eat- 
ing a slice of smoked salmon, twelve sardines, 
and a hunk of gruyere. When he had done, 
and was reflecting what a queer dinner he 
had made, he discovered that this was only a 
preface, for the door was thing open and he 
beheld another chamber with a splendid 
table laid out d la franqaise. 

In ordinary Russian houses you must not 
expect French dishes. As a treat you will 
be served with balwinia, a cold fish soup, 
made with small beer, cider, and salt cucum- 
bers. The next dish will be some frozen 
turbot from Lake Peipus or the Volga, stewed 
in a saumure of rancid herrings with vine- 
gar. Mutton is not eaten in the North, for 
it tastes of tallow, but hashed veal mixed 
with cloves and cinnamon passes for a 
dainty ; and so does braised beef garnished 
with pickled cherries or apples. One must, 
see a Frenchman munching a pickled apple 
to understand what consternation is. By 
and by a salad is brought in — potatoes, chic- 
ory, dandelion, and radishes mixed up with 
anchovies, vinegar, and brown sugar. Here 
the polite Frenchman's brow breaks out into 
moisture ; but he revives at the sight of a 
sponge cake steeped in rum, which has at. 
least the merit of being so pungent as to take 
away the taste of all the previous courses. 
As soon as the cloth is removed cigarettes 
are brought in with tea and lemons, instead 
of cream, and the Russian host begins to puff 
away until what with the fumes of tobacco, 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



33 



the heat of the stove, and the indigestion 
which the dinner has produced, the guest's 
head begins to turn. Then the host says 
compassionately, ' Try a little vodki. ' 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

DIPLOMATISTS. 

Rcsst.vx diplomatists have long enjoyed the 
reputation which. Epimenidcs gave to the 
Cretans — Kprj-e^ del irevarai ; hut it must 
be considered that if they had not so con- 
stantly practised Talleyrand's maxim about 
speech being given to man for the purpose of 
disguising thought, their country would 
never have thriven as it has. 

Russia has gone on expanding and en- 
croaching by blinding and deceiving other 
nations ;"and we say nations advisedly, for it 
is only the masses who have been deceived, 
not the statesmen, who have never rated Rus- 
sian good faith above its value. But if a 
statesman having suspicions cannot get his 
countrymen to share them, his perspicacity 
serves little ; so it has l>ecn the aim of Rus- 
sian diplomatists to mislead peoples rather 
than the men who ruled them. 

If they could hoax a statesman, so much 
the better — they bagged him. so to say, and 
made him comfortable ; but in constitutional 
countries their object has always been the 
Parliament ; and in States where the popular 
voice counts for little, the Court. 

Russian diplomatists are always clever men 
who have served an apprenticeship in their 
craft by plotting in those boudoir cabals 
which in St. Petersburg are the mainsprings 
of home politics. Xo dullard could carry off 
an important post amid the fierce competi- 
tions which these cabals excite ; and this may 
lead us to remark, by the way, that there is 
no system of government which brings talent 
to the front so well as a thorough-paced des- 
potism. 

When a Russian secures an ambassador- 
ship, it does not mean merely that he is in 
the good lwoks of Prince Gortschakoff ; it 
signifies that he has a strong official party at 
his back, and leaves l>ehind him a number of 
persons, including ladies, who will sing his 
praises under all circumstances. If he falls it is 
because his cabal has ceased to be powerful ; 
but so long as he holds his post he enjoys an 
independence of action unknown to the dip- 
lomatists of other countries. 

And he possesses two other points of supe- 
riority : first . his unlimited command of 
secret-service money ; and, secondly, his total 
irresponsibility as regards public opinion in 
his own country. The lie that would damn 
an English plenipotentiary if clearly brought 
h me to him is accounted no disgrace to a 
Russian in his own land. Xinety-nine-hun- 
dredths of the people never hear of it, and the 
few who do are the polite classes, who hold 
that fil)l)insr is ;> part of the science of life. 
As for the foreigners to whom the untruth has 
been told, they may console themselves by 
reflecting that they had never believed it, of 
if they had let themselves be duped, they 
deem it prudent not to murmur, feeling, ' hon- 
teux comme un renard qu'une pouie aurait 
pris. ' 

The importance of the different embassies 
varies according to circumstances, and one 
capital may sometimes require an astuter man 
than another ; but Russia seldom changes 
her envoys from post to post, each Ambassa- 
dor being accounted specially fitted for the 
country to which he is accredited. 

Baron Brunnow, who so long filled the 
embassy in London, would not have shone in 
Paris, where his ponderous placidity and 
smileless hauteur would have passed for arro- 
gance. He was a genial man after the Eng- 
lish fashion, and was seen at his best when 
talking to some Tory nobleman about agri- 
culture and sports which he understood and 
loved. lie spoke English faultlessly, and 
liked English l)ooks, customs, and dinners. 
He could make an after-dinner speech, pick 
out a good horse amoa^ the Derby favorites 



and back him ; and few appraised so shrewdty 
as he the merits of the rising men iu Parlia- 
ment. 

But lie twice made a capital mistake in dis- 
crimination — the first time when lie thought 
the days of England's warring had entirely 
ceased, which mistake led to the Crimean 
War ; the second mistake, which pervaded 
all his conduct to the time of his retirement, 
was to think that by continually fomenting 
British jealousies as to French ambition lie 
could draw England and Russia along with 
Austria into a concert for the partition of the 
Turkish Empire. Baron Brunnow's hobby 
was a Tory England allied to Russia against 
France, which was his bugbear. 

His successor. Count Schouvaloff, is a man 
of fewer illusions, and endowed with much 
less sympathy with things English, though, 
he, too, has manners which Englishmen like. 
A former general of cavalry, who afterwards 
filled the office of Minister of Police, he has 
that quiet urbanity which nothing can ruffle 
and that patience in listening (seeming to 
agree with the speaker all the while) which 
is a great art. 

Painfully polite with small folk, from 
whom he has nothing to hope ; cheery when 
it is his business to look pleasant, and 
earnestly persuasive when he has ' assur- 
ances ' to give, he is perhaps of all diplomat- 
ists the best fashioned for ' talking over ' 
politicians of shallow wit. Xow and then 
the bluntness of the cavalry officer breaks 
out in his utterances and he strokes his thick 
moustache with a scowl. But he masters 
himself in a moment. It must be a very 
stupid, shuffling minister who provokes him 
to grimace iu this way ; and he seems to reflect 
on second thoughts that it is not worth his 
while to be angry with the creature. Count 
Schouvaloff has a peculiar mordant wit 
which he uses upon occasions ; and his con- 
tempt for popular institutions, journalists, 
and Liberal politicians is so complete that it 
verges upon indulgence. Think of what 
must be felt towards Liberals by a former 
Minister of Police — a man who has trans- 
ported more of these gentlemen to Siberia 
than would fill Westminster Hall and Trafal- 
gar Square too ! 

A very different person is Prince Orloff, 
the Ambassador to Paris, who is French to 
his finger-tips, and uses no flattery when he 
tells Frenchmen that theirs is the country of 
the globe which he most esteems. A simper- 
ing, emotional statesman, who shed tears 
publicly at M. Thiers's funeral ; a lover of 
art, who crowds his drawing-rooms with 
artists and authors ; a sceptic, who assidu- 
ously attends the debates at Versailles and 
looks as if he keenly enjoyed himself every 
time he sees the Republicans play a bout 
against the Church, monarchism, or military- 
ism — Prince Orloff has made more friends for 
himself than for his country. 

As a diplomatist, indeed, he has been a 
failure, for all his attempts to allay French 
su>piciousness of Russian aggression have 
failed. Even M. Thiers, whom the Prince 
used affectionately to call ' cher maitre,' re- 
membered very well how Russia had abetted 
Germany in 1870 ; and he was aware that in 
present times the voice of the Prince d'Ou- 
bril is more potent in Russian councils than 
those of the Orloff family. Moreover, it is 
Princess Lise Troubetzkoi who is the real 
Ambassador to Paris. This small, dainty 
lady, with the sharp gray eyes and chirping 
laugh, is more trusted than Prince Orloff. 
It is she who holds Gortschakoff 's earte- 
blanche to make terms with French statesmen, 
and who for some time past has been trying 
her blandishments on the ' coming man ' of 
France— M. Gambetta. But M. Gambetta 
will not be caught. 

Prince d'Oubril is the Russian Ambassador 
to Berlin — a diplomat ist who looks cut out of 
a book of military tailoring patterns, so very 
stiff and Prussian is he. He and his first 
secretary, Count E. von Kotzebue, are the 



two chief links in the family alliance between 
the Romanoffs and Hohenzollerns. 

Their mission seems to be to persuade the 
Emperor William that the Russian Court is 
infatuated about everything German. 

Prince d'Oubril never misses a review or a 
military levee. Holding an honorary lieu- 
tenant-colonelcy in some Prussian regiment, 
he wears its uniform in preference to his own. 

He speaks German to his attaches and ser- 
vants ; he gives dinners on all the Prussian 
patriotic anniversaries, and clothes his resi- 
dence with bunting on all the kaiserliche- 
koniglicke birthdays. He devours beer-soup 
and potatoes stewed with prunes to prove 
that his palate as well as his heart is German. 

Whether Prince Bismarck likes this so 
Prussian Russian it is difficult to say ; but, 
anyhow, Prince d'Oubril exercises his influ- 
ence through other channels than the 
Chancellor's ; he is less of an ambassador 
than a confidant, who acts as intermediary 
for the relations of two reigning houses 
whose friendship is independent of political 
considerations. He dines with Kaiser Wil- 
helm on days when no other diplomatists are 
invited ; and at Court parties he may be seen 
conversing with his Majesty for half-hours 
at a time. 

His authority is so well established that it 
overshadows that of Count Xovikoff, who is 
Ambassador to Vienna, and has had for seve- 
ral years past a most difficult part to play. 
The Hapsburgs used once to be even greater 
allies of the Russian Imperial family than 
the Hohenzollerns, but the Crimean War 
upset the good understanding ; and now, 
since the Sadowa campaign, the Emperor 
Francis Joseph has been fain to perceive that 
every friendly demonstration from Alexan- 
der to William and vice versa can bode no 
good to himself. 

M. Xovikoff, who is known to be a Prus- 
sophobian, or who at least affects so to be, 
has doubtless spent a good deal of his time in 
explaining privately to Count Andrassy that 
the Russo-Prussian alliance is only a make- 
believe, and that Alexander II. would gladly 
recall the days when Francis Joseph's bust 
in marble was the sole ornament of Nicholas's 
study. But whether he will succeed in con- 
verting a Hungarian nobleman who saw his 
country invaded by Russian troops in 1848, 
and who was himself sentenced to be hanged 
as a rebel in that year, remains to be seen. 

The drawback to Russian diplomacy is 
that all its exponents seem to be pulling differ- 
ent ways, so that if a statesman be inclined 
to credit what one Ambassador says, he soon 
learns that another in a neighboring Court is 
insinuating just the contrary, and swearing 
to it too. Even so must the Cretans have 
transacted business in the days when they 
had ambassadors. 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

TIIE FUTUKE OF TO-DAY. 

If anybody bad inquired two years ago as 
to the future of Russia, the answer he would 
have received would have been very different 
from the one that would be vouchsafed to 
him now. Russia seemed then to be hurrying 
towards her fall. 

Embroiled in financial difficulties, dis- 
tracted by intestine plots, plagued with an 
administrative corruption so deep that its 
effects were felt under the form of a fester- 
ing discontent in all classes, it <vas evident 
that a fierce crisis was approaching, and that, 
the first phase of it would be war. 

Corrupt States in difficulties always think 
of war ; and Russia had one of those big, 
ill-paid, ill-officered armies which if not 
turned to account for the puqjose of slaugh- 
tering foreigners arc apt to become mutinous 
at home. 

The danger was so pressing that the Czar 
became hypochondriacal. This was perceived 
by all who came near him. The melancholy 
madness that had run through the veins of 
Paul, of Alexander, of Nicholas in the last 



34 



THE RUSSIANS OF TO-DAY. 



months of his life seemed to have marked out 
a new victim in the Prince who had begun 
his reign with noble acts, but who had been 
turned from his natural bent of graciousness 
by the influences of a dissolute Court and 
by evil counsellors. 

Evidently the Czar feared war scarcely less 
than peace ; but there lay the implacable 
alternative between some savage revolution in 
which the Throne would be overturned or a 
war in which, by hook or by crook, some glory 
miti'lit be won to consolidate his throne for a 
little while longer — and so he chose war ; or 
rather his advisers chose it for him. But in 
his heart he had little hope of success ; and 
certainly those who watched his reckless ad- 
venture had at first still less. 

There was not a politician in Europe but 
knew that the grievances of the oppressed 
Christians in Turkey, which the most bloody - 
handed Government in the world took for its 
war-cry, were but a paltry pretence ; and it 
was considered certain that England, whose 
interests were menaced by a Russian war of 
aggression, would interfere, amid the ap- 
proval, if not with the alliance, of every free 
State in Christendom. 

Had England done this, Turkey, saved from 
destruction by British arms, must have 
yielded to British advice as to the govern- 
ment of her subject provinces, which would 
then have got better terms than they are ever 
likely to obtain from Russia ; and the latter 
country, overthrown as a dominant military 
Power, would before long have found regen- 
eration as a free community. 

It may be said that a European war might 
have resulted from British interference in the 
East. Perhaps ; but with England, France, 
Austria, Italy, Denmark, Holland, and Bel- 
gium all on one side, the outcome of a gen- 
eral war would have been the satisfactory 
settlement of all the questions pending be- 
tween State and State. Europe would have 
entered into a long and strengthening peace 
like that which followed Waterloo ; and cer- 
tainly if there was a class of men who, more 
than another, had a solid interest in seeing 
this state of things come to pass, that class 
ought to have included the Liberals in every 
country. 

But it was precisely the British Liberals 
who caused matters to take a different turn. 
Led on by the statesman who had formerly 
denounced the despotic rule of King Bomba 
in Naples, these men, blinded by party pas- 
sion, and amid the astonishment of the Lib- 
erals in every other country, raised the cry 
of Russian humanity and disinterestedness, 
forsooth ! They gave Russia a strength 
which her arms would never have secured 
for her. They sealed the fate of Turkey, 
threw their Bulgarian proves under the Rus- 
sian heel, and sowed the seeds of many a 
future war. It would have taken a clear- 
sighted Liberal to predict that a party of 
peace and progress would ever act in this ! 



way, at the bidding of a man soured at hav- 
ing lost his popularity and burning to revenge 
himself by hampering his successor in office. 
But the mischief has been done, and it be 
hoves one less to mourn over what is irrevo- 
cable than to examine the probable results of 
the most stupendous piece of political way- 
wardness that ever placed a great country in 
jeopardy. 

First, the progress of Russia in civilization 
has been indefinitely adjourned ; for the con- 
dition of popular sentiment in the country is 
such that the Government cannot concede 
one reform without yielding many ; and, as 
these reforms would involve the sweeping 
away of the Tschinn, the tschinovniks who 
hold the power in their hands will prefer to 
yield nothing. Why should they do so when, 
now that the nation is elated by victory, they 
'can keep it under control by turning its 
thoughts towards new and greater conquests 
in the future ? . 

A people that is being trained in the arts 
of war for some specific purpose forgets its 
burdens and grievances. Present discom- 
forts are lightened by prospect of a better 
time coming, when there will be spoils to 
share and honors to show ; and if some reflect 
that there cannot be spoils and honors for 
everybody, whereas all may count upon a 
share of hardships and wounds, these are the 
few whose voices are not heard amid the gen- 
eral martial clamor. 

Russian peacemongers are going to have a 
poor time of it ; for a greater war than Rus- 
sia ever waged before is held to be preparing, 
and this time the enemy will be England. 
There will be no concealment about it. All 
over that vast country, which covers an ex- 
tent half as large as Europe, it is known 
already that Russia has given England a 
buffet, and to-morrow it will be known that 
England, fretful under her humiliation, has 
become a menace for Russian interests. 

With such fables as ignorant, half -barbar- 
ous peoples easily swallow, it will be told to 
the hungry mujick that England is the coun- 
try which prevents him from bettering him- 
self at the expense of the sunny kingdoms of 
Hindustan. Where these kingdoms lie the 
mujick does not know ; but he will dream of 
them, and be ready to fight for them when 
the time comes. 

Meanwhile, there will be no stinting of 
Russian armaments — no questioning as to 
whether six millions, or sixteen, or sixty can 
be afforded for the work of making Russia 
fit to satiate her ambition. The money will 
be found somewhere by loans and heaped-up 
taxes ; and every year gold will be squan- 
dered in piles to provide artillery, improved 
rifles, and gaudily-equipped regiments, for a 
country which has scarcely any schools, 
pavements, or drains. 

To keep pace with so gigantic an armament, 
England will have to put forth her best too, 
or else she will lose India. It is of no use to | 



blink this issue. There will be no need to 
invade India : a new mutiny would serve 
Russia's purpose quite as well, and better. 
From the moment when Turkey was struck 
down England had no ally in the East, and, 
what is worse, Turkish influence under Rus- 
sian direction will stir up the fanaticism of 
forty millions of Indian Mussulmans against 
us. 

England's possessions must now be 
guarded by herself alone, and it will be the 
better for her if she at once accepts the fact 
that she cannot guard them with such forces 
as have hitherto sufficed. Liberal policy has 
laid upon her the necessity of soon quadru- 
pling her army and doubling her fleet ; and the 
best that an Englishman can hope is that his 
countrymen will proceed to do this while it 
is yet time, and not wait till a disaster lights 
upon them. 

Ultimately, of course, Russia must be over- 
taken by the fate that comes upon all barba- 
rous States that grow too big. It must fall to 
pieces. 

The old Muscovites, who foresee this, have 
never been anxious for the conquest of Con- 
stantinople, knowing that this city would 
shortly become the capital of the Empire ; 
and that between the races established in in- 
dolent ease among the provinces of the sunny 
south and those hardened in the cold climate 
of the north there would be a disruption. 

Neither can Russia eternally stave off the 
difficulties engendered by the Socialism that 
lurks in country districts and the fanatical 
Nihilism which is smouldering in the towns. 
The day will come when the sword must be 
sheathed, and when home questions will 
struggle to the front ; and then the dangers 
of a mighty convulsion that will heave up 
the whole country and plunge it into anarchy 
will arise. 

But this is looking far afield ; and it is 
enough for England that when Plevna fell 
Russia renewed her lease of military power 
and turbulence for another generation at least. 
She has become an overt enemy whom Eng- 
lishmen cannot afford to ignore — least of all 
to despise. England can still prevent her 
from doing her worst ; but it is only vigi- 
lance and strength that will check her, not 
sentiment and weakness. 

And we are bound to remember that in 
staying Russian aggression we shall be dis- 
charging a sacred duty, incumbent on us as 
Christians and true Liberals. We have taken 
upon ourselves to reclaim a hundred and fifty 
millions of Indians from a barbarism into 
which they would soon relapse if our guiding 
hands failed them. It is a holy task, from 
which we must not suffer ourselves to be di- 
verted. Posterity will hold us accountable 
for it, and God's blessing will not fail us in 
prosecuting it now. if we are steadfast, as 
we ought to be, in so good a cause. 

THE END. 



PUBLISHERS' ANNOUNCEMENT. 

FRANKLIN SQUARE LIBRARY. 



Harper's Library of Select Novels, Harper's Maga- 
zine, Weekly, and Bazar, and Harper's Half-Hour Series, 
were all established for the purpose of supplying the American 
public with cheap reading- in elegant form and of a high order 
of literary merit. The unexampled popularity which these va- 
rious publications have achieved has shown that they hit the 
mark squarely ; but, as taste grows with what it feeds on, the 
demand for still cheaper forms of publication has been so wide- 
ly diffused throughout the country that Harper & Brothers 
have been induced to supply it by the establishment of the 
Franklin Square Library. In this series some of the works 
of the most popular authors of the' day will be presented in 



a handy and not unattractive form, at prices which will make 
them acceptable to that large class of American readers who 
may not find it convenient to encumber themselves with books 
or periodicals too costly to be cast aside after perusal. 

The series will open with "Is He Popenjoy?" by Anthony 
Trollope, to be followed by Victor Hugo's graphic and 
dramatic "History of a Crime;" "All or Nothing," by Mrs. 
Cashel Hoey ; " Macleod of Dare," by William Black ; 
a new novel by R. D. Blackmore, and other works by well- 
known and popular authors. The publishers will endeavor to 
make the Franklin Square Library the cheapest and best 
scries of the kind in America, 



HARPER'S HALF-HOUR 




A VALUABLE LIBRARY: 

Bomwe, Belles - Lsttres, History, Biooapny, Fine, Domestic Science, &c. 

SPECIAL INDUCEMENTS TO PRIVATE BUYERS. 

25 OF THE FOLLOWING VOLUMES IN A BOX FOR $5 00. 



CENTS 

Tender Recollections of Irene Macgillicuddy 15 

Constantinople. By James Bryce 15 

The Turks in Europe. By Edward A. Freeman 15 

Kate Cronin's Dowry. B J Airs. Cashel Hoev 15 

Reaping the Whirlwind. By AIary Cecil Hay 20 

Seven Years and Mair. By Anna T. Sadlier 20 

Brother Jacob.— The Lifted Veil. By George Eliot 20 

A Shadow on the Threshold. By AIary Cecil Hay 20 

Georgie's Wooer. By Airs. Leith-Adams 20 

The Bride of Landeck. By G. P. R. James 20 

Da Capo. By Miss Thackeray 20 

Spanish Armada for the Invasion of England 20 

Poor Zeph ! By F. \V. Robinson 20 

Janet's Repentance. By George Eliot 20 

Mr. Gilfil's Love Story. By George Eliot 20 

Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton. By George Eliot 20 

The Jews and their Persecutors. By Eugene Lawrence 20 

Percy and the Prophet. By Wilkie Collins 20 

The House on the Beach. By George Meredith 20 

The Mill of St. Herbot. By Kaiharise S. Macqloid 20 

The Jilt. By Charles Reade. Dlust rated 20 

The Time of Roses. By Geraldine Butt 20 

Dieudonnee. By Geraldine Butt 20 

Oliver Cromwell. By Knatchbcll-Hlgessen 20 

Thompson Hall. By Anthony Trollope. Illustrated 20 

The Youth's Health-Book 25 

A Sussex Idyl. By Clementina Black 25 

Count Moltke's Letters from Russia. Transl. by Grace Bigelow. . 25 

David's Little Lad. By L. T.Meade 25 

Back to Back. A Story of To-Day. By Edward Everett Hale. . . 25 

Shepherds All and Maidens Fair. By Besant and Rice 25 

My Lady's Money. Related by Wilkie Collins 25 

Warren Hastings. By Lord Macaulay 25 



CENTS' 

Life and Writings of Addison. By Lord Macaulay 25. 

Lord Clive. By Lord Macaulay 25 

Frederic the Great. By Lord Macaulay 25 

The Earl of Chatham. By Lord Macaulay 25 

William Pitt. By Lord Macaulay 25 

Samuel Johnson. By Lord Macaulay 25 

John Hampden.— Lord Burleigh. By Lord Macaulay 25 

Sir William Temple. By Lord Macaulay 25 

Machiavelli. -Horace Walpole. By Lord Macaulay 25 

John Milton.— Lord Byron. By Lord Macaulay 25 

Bunyan. -Goldsmith— Madame d'Arblay. By Lord Macaulay. . 25 

A B C of Finance. By Simon Newcomb 25 

University Life in Ancient Athens. By W. W. Capes 25 

Virginia. A Roman Sketch 25 

Cooking Receipts. From Harper's Bazar 25 

Peter the Great. By John Lothrop Motley 25 

Greek Literature. By Eugene Lawrence 25 

Latin Literature. By Eugene Lawrence 25 

Mediaeval Literature. By Eugene Lawrence 25 

English Literature : Romance Period. By Eugene Lawrence 25 

German Literature. By Helen S. Conant 25 

English History. Early England. By Fred. York-Powell 25 

English History. England a Continental Power. By L. Creighton. . 25 

English History. Rise of the People. By Jas. Rowley, M.A 2C 

English History. Tudors and the Reformation. By M. Creighton, ALA. 25 
English History. Struggle Ag'st Absolute Monarchy. B. M. Cordery. 25 
English History. Settlement of the Constitution. James Rowley. . 25 
English History. During Amer. and European Wars. 0. W. Tancock. 25 
English History. Modern England. By Oscar Browning, M.A. .. . 25 
When the Ship Comes Home. By Walter Besant and James Bice. 25 
Tales from Shakespeare. Tragedies. By Chas. and Mary Lamb. . 25 
Tales from Shakespeare. Comedies. By Chas. and Mary Lamb. . 25 
Hints to Women on the Care of Property. By Alfred Walker. 25 
A Year of American Travel. By Jessie Benton Fremont 25 



If tbe Half-ITonr Series, published hy Messrs. Harper & Brothers, keeps on 
macli longer in '• Ihe way ic has) got" our vocabulary of commendation will be ex- 
hausted. We have said of one and another of the numbers, that it was spirited, 
charming, engaging, interesting, a pleasant pastime, a work of permanent value, 
brilliant, instructive, and so fo-th. We have spoken positively, comparatively, 
and superlatively, and here nre five more of the darling little books— we use the 
language of affectio , for we have really formed a strong attachment to them— 
and now what are we to say ? what can we say that we have not said. Well, we 
have not said of the series that in excellent qualities crescit eundo, and therefore 
we say it now, and thai right heartily. — Christian Intelligencer, N. Y. 



This dainty phalanx of lilipntian volumes, as it adds one recruit after 
another to its slender tile, will undoubtedly be the means of rescuing many a de- 
lightful bit of writing from the oblivion iuto which short essays aud articles are 
too likely to fall.— A'. Y. Times. 

For the cars, for a lounge under the trees, for the indolent hour when a large 
book is a burden, this Half-Hour Series is a positive luxury.— TTtica Herald. 

This series ought to have a great run. It is just the wanted thing.— Method- 
ist, N. Y. 

Their cheapness, freshness, and legibility are sure to commend them to the 
regard of the reading public. — Boston Journal. 



Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New Yoek. 



55f=* A selection of twenty.five volume* from the aljove Series loill be sent by mail (in box), postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt 

of Five Dollars. T/ie volumes sent separately/ at their advertised prices, postage free. 



HARPER'S LIBRARY EDITIONS 

OF 




Harper & Brothers will send any of the following works by mail, postage prepaid, to any part 

of the United States on receipt of the price. 



WILLIAM BLACK'S NOVELS. 

A Daughter of Heth. — A Princess of Thule. — Green Pastures and 
Piccadilly. — In Silk Attire. — Kilmeny. — Madcap Violet. — 
The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton. — Three Feathers. 
8 volumes, 12mo, Cloth, %\ 50 per volume. 



MISS M CLOCK'S WORKS. 

John Halifax. — Hannah. — Olive. — Ogilvies. — The Head of the 
Family. — Agatha's Husband. — A Life for a Life. — Two 
Marriages. — Christian's Mistake. — A Noble Life. — A Hero. — 
Studies from Life. — The Fairy Book. — Unkind Word. — Mis- 
tress and Maid. — The Woman's Kingdom. — A Brave Lady. 
— My Mother and I. — Sermons out of Church. 19 volumes, 
12mo, Cloth, $1 50 per volume. 



CHARLES DICKENS'S WORKS, 

Martin Chuzzlewit. — David Copperfield. — Dombey and Son. — 
Nicholas Nickleby. — Bleak House. — Pickwick Papers. — 
Little Dorrit. — Barnaby Budge. — Our Mutual Friend. — 
Christmas Stories. — The Uncommercial Traveller, Hard 
Times, and Edwin Drood. — Pictures from Italy, Sketches 
by Boz, and American Notes. 13 volumes, Illustrated, 8vo, 
Cloth, $1 50 per volume. 

Oliver Twist — A Tale of Two Cities. 8vo, Cloth, Illustrated, 
$1 00 per volume. 

The Old Curiosity Shop. 13mo, Cloth, Illustrated, $1 25. 



HARPER* S LIBRARY EDITIONS OF POPULAR NOVELS.— Continued. 



CHARLES READE'S NOVELS. 

A Woman-Hater. — Hard Cash. — Foul Play. — White Lies. — Love 
Me Little, Love Me Long. — Griffith Gaunt. — The Cloister and 
the Hearth. — It is Never Too Late to Mend. — Peg Woffington, 
Christie Johnstone, &c. — Put Yourself in His Place. — A Ter- 
rible Temptation. — A Simpleton, and The Wandering Heir. 
Twelve volumes, Illustrated, 12mo, Cloth, $1 25 per volume. 



WILKIE COLLINS'S NOVELS. 

Armadale. — Basil. — Hide-and-Seek. — Man and Wife. — No Name. 
— Poor 3Iiss Finch. — The Dead Secret. — The Moonstone. — 
— The New Magdalen. — The Woman in White. — Antonina. 
— After Dark, and other Stories. — Queen of Hearts. — My 
Miscellanies. — The Law and The Lady. — The Two Des- 
tinies. 16 volumes, 12mo, Cloth, $1 50 per volume. 



W. M. THACKERAY'S WORKS. 

Novels: Vanity Fair. — Pendennis. — The Newcomes. — The Vir- 
ginians. — Adventures of Philip. — Henry Esmond, and Lovel 
the Widower. Illustrated. Six volumes, 12mo, Cloth, $1 50 
per volume. 

Miscellaneous Writings: Barry Lyndon, Hoggarty Diamond, &c. 
-Paris and Irish Sketch - Books, &c. — Book of Snobs, 
Sketches, <fcc. — Four Georges, English Humorists, Round- 
about Papers, &c. — Catherine, Christmas Books, &c. Illus- 
trated. Five volumes, 12mo, Cloth, $1 50 per volume. 



GEORGE ELIOT'S NOVELS. 

Adam Bede. — Daniel Deronda, 2 vols. — Felix Holt. — Middle- 
march, 2 vols. — Scenes of Clerical Life, and Silas Marner. — 
The Mill on the Floss. Illustrated. Nine volumes, 12mo, 
Cloth, .$1 50 per volume. 



Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New Yoek. 



HARPER'S LIBRARY OF SELECT NOVELS. 



Messrs. Harper & Brothers beg leave to call attention to the following revised and enlarged list of their " Library 
of Select Novels," and to the reduced prices. 

The list has been increased in number and interest by the addition of many works of fiction by leading novelists 
of the day, whose productions have hitherto appeared in more expensive form [see numbers 493 to 595 of accompanying 
list]. The series has been long before the public, and its interest and sterling value have been generally recognized. "Well- 
informed readers of fiction have considered the appearance of a novel in this series to be always a guarantee of merit. 



PRICE 



1. Pelham. By Bulwer $ 40 

2. The Disowned. By Bulwer 50 

3. Devereux. By Bulwer 40 

4. Paul Clifford. By Bulwer 40 

5. Eugene Aram. By Bulwer 35 

6. The Last Days of Pompeii. By Bulwer 25 

7. The Czarina. By Mrs. Hofland 40 

8. Rienzi. By Bulwer 40 

9. Self-Devotion. By Miss Campbell 30 

10. The Nabob at Home 35 

11. Ernest Maltravers. By Bulwer 35 

12. Alice; or, The Mysteries. By Bulwer 35 

18. The Last of the Barons. By Bulwer 50 

14. Forest Days. By James 40 

15. Adam Brown, the Merchant. By H. Smith ... 35 

16. Pilgrims of the Rhine. By Bulwer 20 

17. The Home. By Miss Bremer 35 

18. The Lost Ship. By Captain Neale 40 

19. The False Heir. By James 40 

20. The Neighbors. By Miss Bremer 35 

21. Nina. By Miss Bremer 35 

22. The President's Daughters. By Miss Bremer. . 20 

23. The Banker's Wife. By Mrs. Gore 35 

24. The Birthright. By Mrs. Gore 20 

25. New Sket ches of E very-day Life. By Miss Bremer 35 
20. Arabella Stuart. By James , 35 

27. The Grumbler. By Miss Pickering 35 

28. The Unloved One. By Mrs. Hofland 40 

29. Jack of the Mill. By William Howitt 20 

30. The Heretic. By Lajetchnikoff 40 

31. The Jew. By Spindler 50 

32. Arthur. By Sue 40 

33. Chatsworth. By Ward 30 

34. The Prairie Bird. By C. A. Murray 50 

35. Amy Herbert. By Miss Sewell 35 

36. Rose d'Albret. By James 40 

37. The Triumphs of Time. By Mrs. Marsh 40 

38. The H Family. By Miss Bremer 40 

39. The Grandfather. By Miss Pickering. , 30 

40. Arrah Neil. By Jame3 35 

41. The Jilt 35 

42. Tales from the German 25 

43. Arthur Arundel. By H. Smith 40 

44. Agincourt. By James 40 

45. The Regent's Daughter f 35 

46. The Maid of Honor 25 

47. Safia. By De Beauvoir 25 

48. Look to the End. By Mrs. Ellis 40 

49. The Improvisatore. By Andersen 30 

50. The Gambler's Wife. By Mrs. Grey 40 

51. Veronica. By Zschokke 25 

52. Zoe. By Miss Jewsbury 35 

53. Wyoming 30 

54. De Rohan. By Sue 40 

'55. Self. By the Author of "Cecil" 50 

56. The Smuggler. By James 50 

57. The Breach of Promise .- 35 

58. Parsonage of Mora. By Miss Bremer 20 

59. A Chance Medley. By T. C. Grattan 35 

60. The White Slave 50 

61. The Bosom Friend. By Mrs. Grey 35 

62. Amaury. By Dumas 25 

63. The Author's Daughter. By Mary Howitt 20 

64. Only a Fiddler! &c. By Andersen 50 

65. The Whiteboy. By Mrs. Hall 40 

66. The Foster. Brother. Edited by Leigh Hunt. . . 40 

67. Love and Mesmerism. By H. Smith 50 

68. Ascanio. By Dumas 50 

69. Lady of Milan. Edited by Mrs. Thomson 50 

70. The Citizen of Prague CO 

71. The Royal Favorite. By Mrs. Gore 35 

72. The Queen of Denmark. By Mrs. Gore 35 

73. The Elves, &c. ByTieck 40 

74. 75. The Step-Mother. By James CO 

76. Jessie's Flirtations 30 

77. Chevalier d'Harmental. By Dumas 35 

75. Peers and Parvenus. By Mrs. Gore 35 

79. The Commander of Malta. By Sue 25 

80. The Female Minister 25 

81. Emilia AVyndham. By Mrs. Marsh 40 

82. The Bnsh-Ranger. By Charles Rowcroft 40 

83. The Chronicles of Clovernook 20 



PRICE 



84. Genevieve. By Lamartine $ 20 

85. Livoniau Tales 20 

86. Lettice Arnold. By Mrs. Marsh 20 

87. Father Darcy. By Mrs. Marsh 40 

88. Leontine. By Mrs. Maberly 40 

S9. Heidelberg. By James 40 

90. Lucretia. By Bulwer. 40 

91. Beauchamp. By James 40 

92. 94. Fortescue. By Knowles 60 

93. Daniel Denison, &c. By Mrs. Hofland 30 

•95. Cinq-Mars. By De Vigny 40 

96. Woman's Trials. By Mrs. S. C. Hall 50 

97. The Castle of Ehrenstein. By James 35 

98. Marriage. By Miss S. Ferrier 40 

99. Roland Cashel. By Lever. Illustrated 75 

100. Martins of Cro' Martin. By Lever 60 

101. Russell. By James 40 

102. A Simple Story. By Mrs. Inchbald 30 

103. Norman's Bridge. By Mrs. Marsh 35 

104. Alamance. 40 

105. Margaret Graham. By James 20 

106. The Wayside Cross. By E. H. Milman 20 

107. The Convict. By James 35 

108. Midsummer Eve. By Mrs. S. C. Hall 25 

109. Jane Eyre. By Currer Bell 40 

110. The Last of the Fairies. By James 20 

111. Sir Theodore Broughton. By James 40 

112. Self-Control. By Mary Brunton 50 

113. 114. Harold. By Bulwer 60 

115. Brothers and Sisters. By Miss Bremer 40 

116. Gowrie. By James 35 

117. A Whim and its Consequences. By James 40 

118. Three Sisters and Three Fortunes. By G. II. 

Lewes 50 

119. The Discipline of Life 40 

120. Thirty Years Since. By James 50 

121. Mary Barton. By Mrs. Gaskell 40 

122. The Great Hoggarty Diamond. By Thackeray 20 

123. The Forgery. By James 40 

124. The Midnight Sun. By Miss Bremer 20 

125. 126. The Caxtons. By Bulwer 50 

127. Mordaunt Hall. By Mrs. Marsh 40 

128. My Uncle the Curate 40 

129. The Woodman. By James 50 

130. The Green Hand. A "Short Yarn" 50 

131. Sidonia the Sorceress. By Meinhold 50 

132. Shirley. By Currer Bell 50 

133. The Ogilvies 35 

134. Constance Lyndsay. By G. C. H 30 

135. Sir Edward Graham. By Miss Sinclair 50 

136. Hands not Hearts. By Miss Wilkinson 30 

137. The Wilmingtons. By Mrs. Marsh 35 

138. Ned Allen. By D. Hannay 30 

139. Night and Morning. By Bulwer 50 

140. The Maid of Orleans 50 

141. Antonina. By Wilkie Collins 40 

142. Zanoni. By Bulwer 35 

143. Reginald Hastings. By Warburton 35 

144. Pride and Irresolution 35 

145. The Old Oak Chest. By James 40 

146. Julia Howard. By Mrs. Martin Bell 30 

147. Adelaide Lindsay. Edited by Mrs. Marsh 25 

148. Petticoat Government. By Mrs. Trollope 40 

149. The Luttrells. By F. Williams 35 

150. Singleton Fontenoy, R.N. By Hannay 40 

151. Olive. By the Author of " The Ogilvies" 35 

152. Hemy Smeaton. By James 50 

153. Time, the Avenger. By Mrs. Marsh 35 

154. The Commissioner. By James 60 

155. The Wife's Sister. By Mrs. Hubback 35 

156. The Gold Worshipers 35 

157. The Daughter of Night. By Fullom 35 

15S. Stuart of Dunleath. By Hon. Caroline Norton. 35 

159. Arthur Conway. By Captain E. H. Milman . . 40 

160. The Fate. By James 40 

161. The Lady and the Priest. By Mrs. Maberly. . . 35 

162. Aims and Obstacles. By James 50 

163. The Tutor's Ward 30 

161. Florence Sackville. By Mrs. Burbury 50 

165. Ravenscliffe. By Mrs. Marsh 40 

166. Maurice Tiernay. By Lever 50 

167. The Head of the Family. By Miss Mulock. ... 50 



PRICE 



16S. Darien. By Warburton $ 35 

169. Falkeuburg 50 

170. The Daltons. By Lever 75 

171. Ivar; or, The Skjuts-Boy. By Miss Carlen... 35 

172. Pequinillo. By James 40 

173. Anna Hammer. By Temme 40 

174. A Life of Vicissitudes. By James 25 

175. Henry Esmond. By Thackeray 50 

176. #77. My Novel. By Bulwer 75 

173. Katie Stewart 20 

179. Castle Avon. By Mrs. Marsh 40 

180. Agnes Sorel. By James 40 

181. Agatha's Husband. By the Author of " Olive" 35 

182. Villette. By Currer Bell 50 

153. Lover's Stratagem. By Miss Carlen 35 

154. Clouded Happiness. By Countess D'Orsay. ... 30 

155. Charles Auchester. A Memorial 50 

ISO. Lady Lee's Widowhood 40 

1S7. Dodd Family Abroad. By Lever 60 

1SS. Sir Jasper Carew. By Lever 50 

1S9. Quiet Heart 20 

190. Aubrey. By Mrs. Marsh 50 

191. Ticonderoga. By James 40 

192. Hard Times. By Dickens 25 

193. The Young Husband. By Mrs. Grey 85 

194. The Mother's Recompense. By Grace Aguilar. 50 

195. Avillion, &c. By Miss Mulock 60 

196. North and South. By Mrs. Gaskell 40 

197. Country Neighborhood. By Mis3 Dupuy 40 

198. Constance Herbert. By Miss Jewsbury 30 

199. The Heiress of Haughton. By Mrs. Marsh 35 

200. The Old Dominion. By James 40 

201. John Halifax. By the Author of " Olive," &c. 50 

202. Evelyn Marston. By Mrs. Marsh 35 

203. Fortunes of Glencore. By Lever 50 

204. Leonora d'Orco. By James 40 

205. Nothing New. By Miss Mulock 30 

206. The Rose of Ashurst. By Mrs. Marsh 35 

207. The Athelings. By Mrs. Oliphant 50 

20S. Scenes of Clerical Life 50 

209. My Lady Ludlow. By Mrs. Gaskell 20 

210, 211. Gerald Fitzgerald. By Lever 40 

212. A Life for a Life. By Miss Mulock 40 

213. Sword and Gown. By Geo. Lawrence 20 

214. Misrepresentation. By Anna H. Drury 60 

215. The Mill on the Floss. By George Eliot 50 

216. One of Them. By Lever 50 

217. A Day's Ride. By Lever. Illustrated 49 

218. Notice to Quit. By Wills 40 

219. A Strange Story. Illustrated 50 

220. Brown, Jones, and Robinson. By Trollope 35 

221. Abel Drake's Wife. By John Saunders 50 

222. Olive Blake's Good Work. By J. C. Jeaffreson. 50 

223. The Professor's Lady. Illustrated 20 

224. Mistress and Maid. By Miss Mulock 30 

225. Aurora Floyd. By M. E. Braddon 40 

226. Barrington. By Lever 40 

227. Sylvia's Lovers. By Mrs. Gaskell 40 

228. A First Friendship 25 

229. A Dark Night's Work. By Mrs. Gaskell 25 

230. Countess Gisela. By E. Marlitt. Illustrated. . 30 

231. St. Olave's. By Eliza Tabo/ 40 

232. A Point of Honor 30 

233. Live it Down. By Jeaffreson 60 

234. Martin Pole. By Saunders 30 

235. Mary Lyndsay. By Lady Ponsonby 40 

236. Eleanor's Victory. By M. E. Braddon. Ill's. 60 

237. Rachel Ray. By Trollope 35 

23S. John Marchmont's Legacy. By M. E. Braddon 50 

239. Annis Warleigh's Fortunes. By Holme Lee. . . 50 

240. The Wife'3 Evidence. By Wills 40 

241. Barbara's History. By Amelia B. Edwards 50 

242. Cousin Phillis 20 

243. What will he do with It? By Bulwer 75 

244. The Ladder of Life. By Amelia B. Edwards. . . 25 

245. Denis Duval. By Thackeray. Illustrated 25 

246. Maurice Dering. By Geo. Lawrence 25 

247. Margaret Denzil's History 50 

24S. Quite Alone. By George Augustus Sala. Ill's. 60 

249. Mattie : a Stray 40 

250. My Brother's Wife. By Amelia B. Edwards. . . 25 

251. Uncle Silas. By J. S. Le Fanu 40 



HARPER'S LIBRARY OF SELECT NOVELS. 



PEICE 



252. Lovel the Widower. By Thackeray $ 20 

953. Miss Mackenzie. By Anthony Trollope 35 

251. On Guard. By Annie Thomas 40 

255. Theo Leigh. By Annie Thomas 40 

256. Denis Doane. By Annie Thomas 40 

25T. BeliaL 30 

255. Carry's Confession 50 

259. Miss Carew. By Amelia B. Edwards 35 

260. Hand and Glove. By Amelia B. Edwards .... 30 

261. Guy Deverell. By J. S. Le Fanu 40 

262. Haifa Million of Money. By Amelia B. Edwards. 

Illustrated 50 

263. The Belton Estate. By Anthony Trollope. ... . 35 

264. Agnes. By Mrs. Oliphant 50 

265. Walter Goring. By Annie Thomas 40 

266. Maxwell Drewitt. By Mrs. J. H. Riddell 50 

26T. The Toilers of the Sea. By Victor Hugo. Bi's. . 50 

263. Miss Marjoribanks. By Mrs. Oliphant 50 

269. True History of a Little Ragamuffin. By James 

Greenwood 35 

270. Gilbert Rugge. By the Author of "A First 

Friendship " 60 

271. Sans Merci. By Geo. Lawrence 35 

272. Phemie Keller. By Mrs. J. H. Riddell 35 

273. Land at La3t. By Edmund Yates 40 

374. Felix Holt, the Radical. By George Eliot 50 

275. Bound to the Wheel. By John Saunders 50 

276. All in the Dark. By J. S. Le Fanu 30 

277. Kissing the Rod. By Edmund Yates 40 

273. The Race for Wealth. By Mrs. J. H. Riddell.. 50 

279. Lizzie Lorton of Greyrigg. By Mrs. Linton. . . 60 

2S0. The Beanclercs, Father and Son. By C. Clarke 25 

2->l. Sir Brook Fossbrooke. By Charles Lever 50 

S82. Madonna Mary. By Mrs. Oliphant 50 

283. Cradock Xowell. By R. D. Blackmore 60 

284. BernthaL From the German of L. Miihlbach. 30 

285. Rachel's Secret 40 

256. The CUverings. By Anthony Trollope. Ill's.. 60 

287. The Village on the Cliff. By Miss Thackeray. 

Illustrated. 25 

288. Played Out. By Annie Thomas 40 

289. Black Sheep. By Edmund Yates 40 

290. Sowing the Wind. By E. Lynn Linton 35 

291. Nora and Archibald Lee 40 

292. Raymond's Heroine 40 

293. Mr. Wynyard's Ward. By Holme Lee 25 

294. Alec Forbes. By George Macdonald 50 

295. No Man's Friend. By F. W. Robinson 60 

296. Called to Account. By Annie Thomas 40 

297. Caste 35 

293. The Curate's Discipline. By Mrs. Eiloart 40 

299. Circe. By Babington White 35 

340. The Tenants of Malory. By J. S. Le Fanu... 60 

ML Carlyon's Year. By .Tames Payn 25 

3»2. The Waterdale Neighbors 35 

3»3. Mabel's Progress 40 

304. Guild Court. By Geo. Macdonald. Ill's 40 

305. The Brothers' Bet. By Miss Carlen 25 

306. Playing for High Stakes. By Annie Thom- 

as. Illustrated 25 

307. Margaret's Engagement 25 

308. One of the Family By James Payn 25 

309. Five Hundred Pounds Reward. By a Barrister. 35 

310. Brownlows. By Mrs. Oliphant 60 

311. Charlotte's Inheritance. By Mi^s Braddon... 35 

312. Jeanie's Quiet Life. By Eliza Tabor 30 

313. Poor Humanity. By F. W. Robinson 50 

314. Brakespeare. By Geo. A. I,awrence. With an 

Illustration 40 

315. A Lost Name. By J. S. Le Fanu 40 

316. Love or Marriage 1 By W. Black 30 

317. Dead-Sea Fruit. By Miss Braddon. Illustrated. 50 

318. The Dower House. By Annie Thomas 35 

319. The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly. By Lever. 

ninstrated 50 

320. Mildred. By Georgiana M. Craik SO 

321. Nature's Nobleman. By the Author of " Ra- 

chel's Secret" 35 

322. Kathleen. By the Author of "Raymond's He- 

roine." 50 

323. That Boy of N'orcott\>. By Charles Lever. Ill's.. 25 

324. In Silk Attire. By W. Black. 35 

315. Hetty. By Henry Kingsley 20 

326. False Colors. By Annie Thomas 40 

327. Meta's Faith. By Eliza Tabor 33 

328. Found Dead. By Jame3 Payn 25 

329. Wrecked in Port. By Edmund Yates 35 

330. The Ministers Wife. By Mr?. Oliphant 00 

331. A Beggar on Horseback. By James Payn 35 

332. Kitty. By M. Betham Edwards 33 

333. Only Herself. By Annie Thoma3 35 

334. Hirell. By John Saunders 40 

335. L'nder Foot. By Alton Clyde, ninstrated... 40 

336. So Rnns the World Away. By Mrs. A. C. Steele. 35 

337. Baffled. By Julia Goddard. niustrated 50 

338. Beneath the Wheel? 50 

339. Stern Necessity. By F. W. Robinson 40 

340. Gwendoline's Harvest. By James Payn 25 

341. Kilmeny. Ey William Black 35 



PRICE 



342. John: A Love Story. By Mrs. Oliphant $ 25 

343. True to Herself. By F. W. Robinson 5U 

344. Veronica. By the Author of '-Mabel's Progress" 50 

345. A Dangerous Guest. By the Author of "Gil- 

bert Rugge" 30 

346. Estelle Russell 50 

347. The Heir Expectant. By the Author of " Ray- 

mond's Heroine" 40 

34S. Which i3 the Heroine ? 40 

349. The Vivian Romance. By Mortimer Collins. . 35 

350. In Duty Bound. Illustrated. 35 

351. The Warden and Barchester Towers. By A. 

Trollope 60 

352. From Thistles— Grapes ? By Mrs. Eiloart. ... 35 

353. A Siren. By T. A. Trollope 40 

354. Sir Harry Hotspur of Huniblethwaite. By 

Anthony Trollope. Illustrated 35 

355. Earl's Dene. By R. E. Francillon 50 

356. Daisy Nichol. By Lady Hardy 35 

357. Bred in the Bone. By James Payn. Hi's.... 40 
35S. Fenton's Quest. By Miss Braddon. Illustrated. . 50 

359. Monarch of Mincing-Lane. By W. Black. Ill's. 50 

360. A Life's Assize. By Mrs. J. H. Riddell 40 

361. Anteros. By the Author of "Guy Livingstone." 40 

362. Her Lord and Master. By Mrs. Ross Church. . 30 

363. Won— Not Wooed. By James Payn 35 

364. For Lack of Gold. By Charles Gibbon 35 

365. Anne Furness 50 

366. A Daughter of Heth. By W. Black 35 

367. Dumton Abbey. By T. A. Trollope 40 

363. Joshua Marvel. By B. L. Farjeon 40 

309. Lovels of Arden. By M. E. Braddon. Ill's. 50 

370. Fair to See. By L. W. M. Lockhart 40 

371. Cecil's Tryst. By James Payn 30 

372. Patty. By Katharine S. Macquoid 50 

373. Maud Mohan. By Annie Thomas 25 

374. Grif. By B. L. Farjeon 35 

375. A Bridge of Glass. By F. W. Robinson 30 

376. Albert Land. By Lord Brougham 50 

377. A Good Investment. By Wm. Flagg. Ill's.. 35 

37S. A Golden Sorrow. By Mrs. Cashel Hoey 40 

379. Ombra. By Mrs. Oliphant 50 

3S0. Hope Deferred. By Eliza F. Pollard 30 

381. The Maid of Sker. By R. D. Blackmore 50 

3S2. For the King. By Charles Gibbon 30 

333. A Girl's Romance, and Other Tales. By F. W. 

Robinson SO 

3S4. Dr. Wainwright's Patient. By Edmund Yates. 35 

335. A Passion in Tatters. By Annie Thomas 50 

33'J. A Woman's Vengeance. By James Payn 35 

2SL Strange Adventures of a Phaeton. ByW.Black. 50 

BS?. To the Bitter End. By Miss M. E. Braddon. Ill's. 50 

3S9. Robin Gray. By Charles Gibbon 35 

390. Godolphin. By Bulwer 35 

391. Leila. By Bulwer. Illustrated 25 

392. Kenelm Chillingly. By Lord Lyt ton. Ill's.. 60 

393. The Hour and the Man. By Harriet Martincau 50 

394. Murphy's Master. By James Payn 20 

395. The New Magdalen. By Wilkie Collins 30 

396. '"He Cometh Not,' She Said." By Annie 

Thomas 30 

397. Innocent. By Mrs. Oliphant. Illustrated 50 

398. Too Soon. By Mrs. Macquoid 30 

399. Strangers aud Pilgrims. By Miss Braddon. Ill's. 50 

400. A Simpleton. By Charles Reade 35 

401. The Two Widows. By Annie Thomas 25 

402. Joseph the Jew. By Miss V. W. Johnson 40 

403. Her Face was Her Fortune. By F. W. Robinson. 40 

404. A Princess of Thule. By W. Black. 60 

405. Lottie Darling. By J. C. Jeaffreson 50 

406. The Blue Ribbon. By Eliza Tabor 40 

407. Harry Heathcote of Gangoil. By A. Trollope 

Illustrated 20 

403. Publicans and Sinners. By Miss Braddon... 50 

409. Colonel Docre. By the Author of " Caste". . . 35 

410. Through Fire and Water. By FrederickTalbot. 

Illustrated 20 

411. Lady Anna. By Anthony Trollope 30 

412. Taken at the Flood. By Miss Braddon 50 

413. At Her Mercy. By James Payn 30 

414. Ninety-Three. By Victor Hugo.. Ill's 25 

415. For Love and Life. By Mrs. Oliphant 50 

416. Doctor Thome. By Anthony Trollope 50 

417. The Best of Husbands. By James Payn 25 

418. Sylvia's Choice. By Georgiana M. Craik 30 

419. A Sack of Gold. By Miss V. W. Johnson 35 

420. Squire Arden. By Mrs. Oliphant 50 

421. Lorna Doone. By R. D. Blackmore. Ill's... 61 

422. The Treasure Hunters. By Geo.Manville Fenn. 25 

423. Lost for I.ove. By Miss M. E. Braddon. Ill's. 50 

424. Jack's Sister. By Miss Dora Havers 50 

425. Aileen Ferrers. By Susan Morley 30 

426. The Love that Lived. By Mrs. Eiloart 30 

427. In Honor Bound. By Charles Gibbon 35 

428. Jessie Trim. By B. L. Farjeon 35 

429. Hagarene. By George A. Lawrence 35 

430. Old Myddelton's Money. By Mary Cecil Hay. 25 

431. At the Sign of the Silver Flagon. By Farjeon.. 25 

432. A Strange World. By Misa Braddon 40 



PRICE 



433. Hope Meredith. By Eliza Tabor .$ 35 

434. The Maid of Killeena. By William Black.... 40 

435. The Blossoming of an Aloe. By Mrs. Hoey. . . 30 

436. Safely Married. By the Author of " Caste.". . 25 

437. The Story of Valentine and his Brother. By 

Mrs. Oliphant 50 

43S. Our Detachment. By Katharine King 35 

439. Love's Victory. By B. L. Farjeon 20 

440. Alice Lorraine. By R. D. Blackmore 50 

441. Walter's Word. By James Payn 50 

442. Playing the Mischief. By J. W. De Forest. .. 60 

443. The Lady Superior. By Eliza F. Pollard 35 

444. Iseulte. By the Author of " Vera," " Hotel du 

Petit St. Jean," &c 30 

445. Eglantine. By Eliza Tabor 40 

446. Ward or Wife ? Illustrated 25 

447. Jean. By Mrs. Newman 35 

44S. The Calderwood Secret. By Miss V.W. Johnson 40 

449. Hugh Melton. By Katharine King. Ill's.... 25 

450. Healey 35 

451. Hostages to Fortune. By Miss Braddon. Ill's. 50 

452. The Queen of Connaught 35 

453. Off the Roll. By Katharine King 50 

454. Halves. By James Payn 30 

455. The Squire's Legacy. By Mary Cecil Hay... 25 

456. Victor and Vanquished. By Mary Cecil Hay. 25 

457. Owen Gwynne's Great Work. By Lady Augusta 

Noel 30 

455. His Natural Life. By Marcus Clarke 50 

459. The Curate in Charge. By Mrs. Oliphant 20 

460. Pausanias the Spartan. By Lord Lyttou 25 

461. Dead Men's Shoes. By Miss M. E. Braddon. . 40 

462. The Dilemma. By,the Author of " The Battle 

of Dorking." 50 

463. Hidden Perils. By Mary Cecil Hay. 25 

464. Cripps, the Carrier. By R. D. Blackmore. Ill's. 50 

465. Rose Turquand. By Ellice Hopkins 35 

466. As Long as She Lived. By F. W. Robinson. . . 50 

467. Israel Mort, Overman. By John Saunders. .. . 50 

468. Phoebe, Junior. By Mrs. Oliphant 35 

469. A Long Time Ago. By Meta Orred 25 

470. The Laurel Bush. By the Author of "John 

Halifax, Gentleman." Illustrated 25 

471. Miss Nancy's Pilgrimage. By Virginia W. 

Johnson 40 

472. The Arundel Motto. By Mary Cecil Hay 25 

473. Azalea. By Cecil Clayton 30 

474. Daniel Deronda. By George Eliot 50 

475. The Sun-Maid. By the Author of "Artiste.".. 35 

476. Nora's Love Test. By Mary Cecil Hay 25 

477. Joshua Haggard's Daughter. By Miss M. E. 

Braddon. Illustrated 50 

478. Madcap Violet. By William Black 50 

479. From Dreams to Waking. By E. Lynn Linton. 20 
4S0. The Duchess of Rosemary Lane. By B. L. Farjeon 35 
431. Anne Warwick. By Georgiana M. Craik 25 

482. Weavers and Weft. By Miss Braddon 25 

483. The Golden Butterfly. By the Authors of 

"When the Ship Comes Home," &c 40 

4S4. Juliet's Guardian. By Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron. 

Illustrated 40 

485. Mar's White Witch. By G. Douglas 50 

456. Heaps of Money. By W. E. Norris 25 

487. The American Senator. By Anthony Trollope. 50 

488. Mrs. Arthur. By Mrs. Oliphant 40 

4S9. Winstowe. By Mrs. Leith-Adams 25 

490. Marjorie Bruce's Lovers. By Mary Patrick. . . 25 

491. Romola. By George Eliot. Illustrated 50 

492. Carita. By Mrs. Oliphant. Illustrated 50 

493. Middlemarch. By George Eliot ' 75 

494. For Her Sake. By F. W. Robinson. Ill's 60 

495. Second-Cousin Sarah. By F.W. Robinson. Ill's.. 50 

496. Little Kate Kirby. By F. W. Robinson. Ill's. 50 

497. Luttrell of Arran. By Charles Lever 60 

498. Lord Kilgohbin. By Charles Lever. Ill's 50 

499. Tony Butler. By Charles Lever 60 

500. Breaking a Butterfly. By George A. Lawrence. 

Illustrated 35 

501. Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy. By Charles Dickens.. 10 

502. The Mystery of Edwin Drood. By Charles 

Dickens. Illustrated 25 

503. The Parisians. By Bulwer. Illustrated 60 

504. Stone Edge. With an Illustration 20 

505. The Rule of the Monk. By Garibaldi 30 

506. Inside. By W. M. Baker. Illustrated 75 

507. Carter Quarterman. By W. M. Baker. Ill's. . 60 

508. Three Feathers. By Wm. Black. Ill's 50 

509. Bound to John Company. By Miss Braddon. 

Illustrated 59 

510. Birds of Prey. By Miss Braddon. Illustrated. 50 

511. The Prey of the Gods. By Mrs. Ross Church. 30 

512. The Woman in White. By Wilkie Collins. Ill's. 00 

513. The Two Destinies. By Wilkie Collins. Ill's. 35 

514. The Law and the Lady. By Wilkie Collins. 

Illustrated 50 

515. Poor Miss Finch. By Wilkie Collins. Ill's... 60 
51C. No Name. By Wilkie Collins. Illustrated. . . 60 

517. The Moonstone. By Wilkie Collins. Ill's 60 

518. Man and Wife. By Wilkie Collins. Ill's 60 



HARPER'S LIBRARY OF SELECT NO 



VELS. 



519. Armadale. By Wilkie Collins. Illustrated. . .$ CO 

520. My Daughter Elinor. By Frank Lee Benedict. SO 

521. John AVorthington's Name. By F. LeeBenedict 75 

522. Miss Dorothy's Charge. By F. Lee Benedict. . 75 

523. Miss Van Kortland. By Frank Lee Benedict. . 60 
524 St. Simon's Niece. By Frank Lee Benedict. .. 60 

525. Mr. Vanghan's Heir. By Frank Lee Benedict. 75 

526. Captain Brand. By H. A. Wise. Illustrated. 75 

527. Sooner or Later. By Shirley Brooks. Ill's. . . SO 

528. The Gordian Knot. By Shirley Brooks. With 

an Illustration 50 

529. The Silver Cord. By Shirley Brooks. Ill's... 75 

530. Cord and Creese. By James De Mille. Ill's... 60 

531. The Living Link. By James De Mille. Ill's.. 00 

532. The American Baron. By Ja»ies De Mille. Ill's. 50 

533. The Cryptogram. By James De Mille. Ill's. . . 75 

534. The King of No-Land. By B. L. Farjeon. Ill's. 25 

535. An Island Pearl. By B. L. Farjeon. Ill's 30 

536. Blade-o' -Grass. By B. L. Farjeon. Illustrated. 30 

537. Bread-and-Cheese and Kisses. By B. L. Far- 

jeon. Illustrated 35 

53S. Golden Grain. By B. L. Farjeon. Illustrated. 35 

539. London's Heart. By B. L. Faijeon. Illustrated. 60 

540. Shadows on the Snow. By B. L. Faijeon. Ill's. 30 

541. Not Dead Yet. By John Cordy Jeaffreson 60 

542. The Island Neighbors. By Mrs. A. B. Black- 

well. Illustrated 60 

543. The Woman's Kingdom. By Miss Mulock. Ill's. 60 

544. Hannah. By Miss Mulock. With Three Ill's. . 35 

545. A Brave Lady. By Miss Mulock. Illustrated. 60 

546. My Mother and I. By Miss Mulock. Illustrated. 40. 

547. Chronicles of Carlingford. By Mrs. Oliphant 60 

548. A Son of the Soil. By Mrs. Oliphant 50 

549. The Perpetual Curate. By Mrs. Oliphant 50 

550. Old Kensington. By Miss Thackeray. Ill's.. 60 

551. Miss Angel. By Miss Thackeray. Illustrated. 50 

552. Miss Thackeray's Miscellaneous Writings. II' d. 90 

553. Vanity Fair. By \V. M.Thackeray. Illustrated. SO 

554. The History of Pendennis. By W. M. Thack- 

eray. Illustrated 75 

555. The Virginians. By W. M. Thackeray. Ill's.. 90 



PBICE 

556. The Newcomes. By W. M. Thackeray. Bl's..$ 90 

557. The Adventures of Philip. By W. M. Thack- 

eray. Illustrated 60 

55S. Henry Esmond, and Lovel the Widower. By 

W. M. Thackeray. Illustrated 60 

559. Put Yourself in His Place. By Charles Keade. 

Illustrated 50 

560. A Terrible Temptation. By Charles Reade. Ill's 40 

561. The Cloister and the Hearth. By Charles Reade. 50 

562. The Wandering Heir. By Charleg Reade. Il- 

lustrated 25 

563. Hard Cash. By Charles Reade. Blustrated.. 50 

564. Griffith Gaunt. By Charles Reade. Ill's 40 

565. It is Never Too Late to Mend. By Charles 

Reade 50 

566. Love Me Little, Love Me Long. By Charles 

Reade. With an Illustration 35 

567. Foul Play. By Charles Reade 35 

56S. White Lies. By Charles Reade 40 

569. Peg Wofiington, Christie Johnstone, and Other 

Stories. By Charles Reade 50 

570. A Woman-Hater. By Charles Eeade. With 

Two Illustrations CO 

571. Orley Farm. By Anthony Trollope. Ill's SO 

572. The Vicar of Bullhampton. By Anthony Trol- 

lope. Illustrated SO 

573. The Way We Live Now. By Anthony Trol- 

lope. Illustrated 90 

574. Phineas Finn. By Anthony Trollope. Ill's.. 75 

575. Phineas Redux. By Anthony Trollope. Hi's.. 75 

576. Ralph the Heir. By Anthony Trollope. Ill's. 75 

577. The Eustace Diamonds. By Anthony Trollope. 80 
57S. The Last Chronicle of Barset. By Anthony 

Trollope. Illustrated 90 

579. The Golden Lion of Granpere. By Anthony 

Trollope. Illustrated 40 

5S0. The Prime Minister. By Anthony Trollope. . . 60 
581. Can You Forgive Her? By Anthony Trol- 
lope. Blustrated SO 

5S2. He Knew He Was Right. By Anthony Trol- 
lope. Illustrated SO 



PEICE 

553. The Small House at Allington. By Anthony 

Trollope. Illustrated $ 75 

554. The Sacristan's Household. By Mrs. F. E. Trol- 

lope. Illustrated 50 

555. Lindisfarn Chase. By T. A. Trollope. 00 

5SC. Hidden Sin. Illustrated CO 

5S7. My Enemy's Daughter. By Justin McCarthy. 

Illustrated 50 

5SS. My Husband's Crime. By M R. Housekeeper. 

Illustrated 50 

5S9. Stretton. By Henry Kingsley. With an Illus- 
tration 35 

590. Ship Ahoy ! By G. M. Fenn. Illustrated 35 

591. Debenham's Vow. By Amelia B. Edwards. 

Illustrated 50 

592. Wives and Daughters. By Mrs. Gaskell. B- 

lustralions 60 

593. Recollections of Eton. Illustrated 35 

594. Under the Ban. By M. l'Abbe * » * 60 

595. The Rape of the Gamp. By C. W. Mason. 

Illustrated 75 

590. Ereraa; or, My Father's Sin. By R. D. Black- 
more 50 

597. What He Cost Her. By James Payn 40 

59S. Green Pastures and Piccadilly. By William 

Black 50 

599. A Young Wife's Story. By Harriette Bowra. . 25 

600. A Jewel of a Girl. By the Author of " Queenie." 35 
001. An Open Verdict, By Miss M. E. Braddon... 35 

602. A Modern Minister. Vol. I. Illustrated 35 

603. A Modern Minister. Vol. II. (Tri Press.) 

604. Yonng Musgrave. By Mrs. Oliphant 40 

605. Two Tales of Married Life. By Georgians M. 

Craik and M. C. Stirling 30 

006. The Last of the Haddons. By Mrs. Newman. 25 

607. The Wreck of the "Grosvenor" 30 

60S. By Proxy- By James Payn 35 

C09. By Celia's Arbor. By Walter Besant and 

James Rice 50 

G10. Deceivers Ever. By Mrs. Cameron 30 

611. Less Black than We're Painted. By James Payn. 35 



HARPER'S PERIODICALS. 



HARPER'S MAGAZINE, One Tear $4 OO 

a HARPER'S WEEKLY, " « 4 OO 

HARPER'S BAZAR, " " 4 OO 

The THREE above-named publications, one year 10 OO 

Any TWO, one year 7 OO 

SIX subscriptions, one year 20 OO 

Terms for large clubs furnished on application. 

The Volumes of the Weekly and Bazar begin with the first Numbers for January, and the Volumes of the Magazine 
with the Numbers for June and December of each year. 

Subscriptions will be commenced with the Number of each Periodical current at the time of receipt of order, except in 
cases where the subscriber otherwise directs. 



BOUND VOLUMES. 

Bound Volumes of the Magazine, each Volume containing' the Numbers for Six Months, will be furnished for $3 00 per 
Volume in cloth, or $5 25 in half calf, sent by mail, postage paid. A complete Analytical Index of the first fifty 
Volumes — from June, 1850, to May, inclusive — is now ready. Price, cloth, $3 00; half calf, $5 25. 

Volumes of the Weekly or Bazar, bound in cloth, each containing the Numbers for a Year, will be furnished for §7 00 
each ; freight (if not exceeding one dollar a volume) paid by the Publishers. 

Remittances should be made by Post-Office Money Order or Draft, to avoid chance of loss. 

Address ^ g q g ^ HAEPEE & BEOTHEES, 

Franklin Square, New York. 




5 * 'a . , * * A 

v-^V V^>*' 




; . .*» X/ * 



jP4 








> v\SP! ; <^ v % 

I °* •••• A° 



L. 



HECKMAN 

BINDERY INC. 

1985 

N. MANCHESTER, 
_ INDIANA 46962 





